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Contents

v

Introduction
M

icrosoft System Center: Integrated Cloud Platform is targeted toward IT
­executives and architects interested in the big picture of how ­Microsoft’s
cloud strategy is delivered using Windows and Microsoft System Center. We
­provide an all-encompassing approach to understanding and architecting
­Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, and Windows Azure based
­solutions for infrastructure as a service. The combination of Windows, System
Center, and Windows Azure is a cloud-integrated platform, delivering what
­Microsoft calls the “Cloud OS,” which is a common platform spanning private
cloud, public cloud (Windows Azure), and service provider clouds. This platform
enables a single virtualization, identity, data, management, and development
platform across all three cloud types.
This book is organized by cloud type and we begin with a short overview of
the Cloud OS strategy from Microsoft and a high-level hybrid cloud ­architecture
that will be detailed throughout the book. Next we cover the design and
­deployment of private cloud solutions using Windows and System Center to
deliver the software-defined datacenter where storage, network, compute, and
management are all virtualized and delivered by the Microsoft platform. We cover
some of the substantial cost savings that can be achieved using the ­Microsoft
storage platform, the multi-tenancy enabled by our network v­ irtualization
­platform, and the consolidation ratios that can be provided by Hyper-V’s
­scalability and high performance.
With a private cloud foundation in place, we next move to the public cloud and
detail how to extend the private cloud datacenter (network, storage, ­compute,
management) to Windows Azure while treating it as a seamless extension to
your datacenter. Finally, the third cloud type, service provider clouds, are covered
using the same approach—extending your datacenter to service providers. The
end ­result is a robust hybrid cloud architecture where consumers of IT within an
organization can choose the optimal location to host their virtual machines and
services on any of the three cloud types based on which cloud makes the most
sense for their workload.

Acknowledgments
This book summarizes the detailed architecture and design work captured in the
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) reference architecture guides from Microsoft
Services. The ­architectures represent years of lessons learned from our largest and
vii

Errata, updates, & book support
We’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this book and its ­companion
content. You can access updates to this book—in the form of a list of submitted
errata and their related corrections—at:
http://aka.ms/SCcloudplat/
If you discover an error that is not already listed, please submit it to us at the
same page.
If you need additional support, email Microsoft Press Book Support at
mspinput@microsoft.com.
Please note that product support for Microsoft software and hardware is not
offered through the previous addresses. For help with Microsoft software or
­hardware, go to http://support.microsoft.com.

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At Microsoft Press, your satisfaction is our top priority, and your feedback our
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Thanks in advance for your input!

number of key trends are driving the evolution of information technology (IT) today.
New applications requiring global scale, social integration, and mobile capability are
critical in many industries. The proliferation of devices such as smart phones and tablets
is driving the need for applications and services delivery to nearly everywhere on the
globe. The explosion of data and the insight that can be gained from the ­exponential
growth in data is generating demand for enormous storage and analysis capability.
These trends have triggered significant changes to how IT must be delivered, resulting in
the evolution of cloud computing.
Cloud computing is delivered in many forms such as private cloud in an organization’s
datacenter, public cloud in a provider such as Microsoft’s datacenter, or a multitude of
service provider clouds from a range of different organizations. Each provides a different
set of features, capabilities, cost points, and service level agreements (SLA).
Within this environment, organizations have a wide range of options for their
cloud computing needs and an increasing challenge of how to manage a distributed,
­cloud-based infrastructure as well as their various applications and services. As a
­leading provider of on-premises software solutions and one of the largest global cloud
­providers, Microsoft has created a single integrated cloud platform to meet customer’s
needs: the Cloud OS.

The Microsoft Cloud OS vision
The Microsoft Cloud OS strategy can be summarized by the following quote from the
white paper “Unified Management for the Cloud OS: System Center 2012 R2” published
in October 2013:
“The Microsoft vision for a new era of IT provides one consistent platform for
­infrastructure, applications, and data: the Cloud OS. The Cloud OS spans your
­datacenter environments, service provider datacenters, and Windows Azure, enabling
you to easily and cost-effectively cloud optimize your business.”

1

This strategy is unique in the industry as Microsoft is the only global provider of leading
on-premises software for private cloud, large scale public cloud with Windows Azure, and a
global service provider ecosystem.
The Cloud OS strategy provides a common identity, virtualization, management,
­ evelopment, and data platform across private cloud, public cloud, and service-provider
d
cloud as illustrated in Figure 1-1.

FIGURE 1-1 The Microsoft Cloud OS vision.

The various combinations of private, public, and service provider clouds are commonly
r­ eferred to as hybrid cloud architectures. The ability to both provide the various types of
cloud infrastructure as well as the ability to manage resources across all of them requires
an integrated cloud platform such as Microsoft’s Cloud OS comprised of Windows Server,
­Windows Azure, and System Center.

Hybrid cloud architectures
The key attribute of the Cloud OS vision is hybrid cloud architecture, in which ­customers
have the option of leveraging on-premises infrastructure, Windows Azure, or Microsoft
­hosting-partner infrastructure. The customer IT organization will be both a consumer and
provider of services, enabling workload and application development teams to make s­ ourcing
selections for services from all three of the possible infrastructures or create solutions that
span them.
Starting from the bottom, the diagram in Figure 1-2 illustrates the cloud infrastructure
level (public, private, and hosted clouds), the cloud service catalog space, and examples
of ­application scenarios and service-sourcing selections (for example, a workload team
­determining if it will use virtual machines that are provisioned on-premises, in

2

CHAPTER 1

Hybrid cloud computing and the Microsoft Cloud OS

Windows Azure, or in a Microsoft hosting partner.) The Cloud OS strategy provides a c­ ommon
identity, virtualization, management, development, and data platform across private cloud,
public cloud, and service provider cloud.

FIGURE 1-2 Hybrid cloud architecture details.

The benefits of this approach are that virtual machines, applications, and services can be
hosted on the cloud that makes the most sense for each workload in terms of cost, capability,
or SLA. Additionally, the Cloud OS enables “VM Mobility” as all three components (private,
public/Azure, service provider) utilize the same underlying Windows Server 2012 R2 and
Hyper-V infrastructure meaning that virtual machines can be moved to any of the cloud types
without having to convert or modify them. The Cloud OS is an integrated cloud platform
where System Center 2012 R2 is able to manage the private cloud as well as virtual machines,
applications, and services hosted in Windows Azure or service provider clouds.
In the next several chapters we will outline how to use the Cloud OS to build a
s­ oftware-defined datacenter and private cloud with Windows Server, Hyper-V, and System
Center as well as consume Windows Azure and service provider clouds by extending your
datacenter and System Center management platform to those clouds. The end result will be
a hybrid cloud architecture that enables applications, workloads, and services to be hosted
on the cloud that makes the most sense for them while providing an integrated management
capability across the hybrid cloud.

Hybrid cloud architectures

CHAPTER 1

3

CHAPTER 2

Private cloud
I

n this chapter we’ll begin the design of the private cloud portion of the hybrid cloud
architecture. The sample design we’ll build over the next several chapters is an overview
of the detailed architecture provided in the following guides on Microsoft TechNet:
■■

■■

■■

“Infrastructure as a Service Product Line Architecture - Fabric Architecture Guide”
found at http://aka.ms/iaasfabricarchitecture
“Infrastructure as a Service Product Line Architecture - Fabric Management Guide”
found at http://aka.ms/iaasfabricmanagement
“Infrastructure as a Service Product Line Architecture - Deployment Guide” found
at http://aka.ms/iaasdeployment

Software-defined storage
For the purposes of this book, we will build a private cloud architecture consisting of
a storage scale-unit, a compute scale-unit, and a network scale-unit which establish a
single-rack configuration supporting over 1,000 virtual machines, over half a petabyte of
storage, over one million IOPS capacity, and over 40 Gb/s to/from the external LAN. The
scale-unit architecture can be expanded with additional racks. The sample architecture is
illustrated in Figure 2-1 and in Table 2-1. While this book describes how to build such an
architecture, several of the Microsoft OEM partners deliver turn-key solutions using this
design approach.

5

FIGURE 2-1 The sample private cloud architecture used for this book.

TABLE 2-1 Details of Sample Private Cloud Architecture Used for this Book

We’ll start with a new approach to enterprise storage called software-defined storage or
virtual SAN. In most enterprise datacenters today, storage infrastructure and management
is one of the highest cost areas of IT. This is in stark contrast to large cloud providers such as
Microsoft which have enormous storage infrastructures which dwarf most enterprises but are
far more cost efficient. How is this possible? Through the use of commodity hardware and
advanced software where all of the storage “intelligence” is provided not by custom hardware
but by software.

FIGURE 2-2 A sample architecture for a software-defined storage solution based on Windows Server

2012 R2.

While this architecture provides many of the same capabilities as a SAN, it is comprised of
the following commodity hardware components:
■■

SAS disks SAS disks provide high performance in throughput and, more i­mportantly,
low latency. SAS drives typically have a rotational speed of 10,000 or 15,000 RPM with
an ­average latency of 2 ms to 3 ms and 6 Gbps interfaces. There are also SAS SSDs
­supporting substantially higher IOPS than spinning disks. SAS disks can support dual
interface ports which is required for using clustered storage spaces. The SCSI Trade
Association has a range of information about SAS. SAS disks are very common and are
available from a wide range of vendors and price points.

Software-defined storage

CHAPTER 2

7

■■

■■

SAS JBOD SAS JBOD (“just a bunch of disks”) refers to the disk trays or enclosures
where SAS disks are housed. The difference between JBOD and an array or SAN is
that a JBOD tray does not have any RAID, storage management, or other intelligence
­built-in, it is simply a physical component providing SAS connectivity between servers
and multiple disks. SAS JBOD typically support 24 or 60 SAS disks in a single enclosure
with two to four SAS ports for server connectivity.
Windows Server 2012 Scale-out File Servers In a traditional SAN architecture,
most of the functionality and intelligence is provided by the SAN controllers. These
are proprietary hardware and software solutions from SAN vendors. In the Microsoft
software-defined storage architecture, this functionality is provided by standard server
hardware running Windows Server 2012 R2. Just as a SAN controller provides disk
resiliency through RAID and advanced features such as tiering and quality of service,
the Windows Server 2012 R2 file server infrastructure provides the same capabilities
through software combined with commodity server hardware.

With the physical infrastructure in place, the software-defined capabilities of Windows Server
2012 R2 can then be utilized. The Windows Server 2012 R2 platform enables a range of storage
virtualization capabilities called Storage Spaces. Storage Spaces enables cost-efficient, highly
available, scalable, and flexible storage solutions. Storage Spaces delivers advanced storage
virtualization capabilities for single server and scalable multinode cluster deployments.
With Storage Spaces. the Windows storage stack has been enhanced to incorporate two
new abstractions:
■■

■■

Storage pools A collection of physical disks that enable you to aggregate disks,
expand capacity in a flexible manner, and delegate administration.
Storage spaces Virtual disks created from free space in a storage pool. Storage
spaces have such attributes as resiliency level, storage tiers, fixed provisioning, and
precise administrative control.

Storage Spaces is manageable through the Windows Storage Management API in
­ indows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Windows PowerShell, and through the
W
File and Storage Services role in Server Manager. Storage Spaces is completely integrated
with failover clustering for high availability, and it is integrated with CSV for scale-out
­deployments. In addition, System Center 2012 R2 enables full deployment and management
of the software-defined storage architecture using Virtual Machine Manager which will be
covered in detail later in this chapter.
While the focus of this chapter is the Microsoft software-defined storage ­architecture
­ sing commodity components to achieve extremely cost efficient and high performance
u
­virtual machine storage, it is very important to understand that the new Microsoft ­storage
platform is multiprotocol and able to support and enhance heterogeneous storage
­environments. Windows File server clusters can front-end both Fibre Channel and iSCSI-based
SAN environments for customers with existing investments. Additionally, file server clusters
based on Windows Server 2012 R2 can present three types of storage: SMB 3.0 file shares,
iSCSI targets, and NFS shares as illustrated in Figure 2-3.

This flexibility allows for a wide range of storage hardware to be utilized and adds
­significant performance and availability features to each of the supported storage features
included in Windows Server 2012 R2, such as:

■■

Chkdsk enhancements

■■

CSV v2

■■

Data deduplication

■■

Improved NTFS availability

■■

iSCSI target improvements

■■

Live storage migration

■■

NFS improvements

■■

ODX

■■

QoS

■■

ReFS

■■

SMB application support

■■

SMB Direct

■■

SMB multichannel

■■

SMB scale-out

■■

SMB transparent failover
Software-defined storage

CHAPTER 2

9

■■

SMB VSS for remote file shares

■■

Storage spaces

■■

Storage Tiering

■■

Thin and trim provisioning

■■

Virtual fibre channel

■■

Write Back Cache

An example of the design of the software-defined storage architecture is illustrated in
Figure 2-4. Note the SAS disk, JBOD, and Windows file server components. This design details
a highlight available architecture using a Scale-out File Server cluster and clustered storage
spaces.

FIGURE 2-4 A design for a software-defined storage architecture.

The above design can support a significant number of virtual machines and IOPS ­using
only two file servers and four JBODs. The architecture is a scale-out design meaning
­additional servers and JBODs can be added in order to support a larger number of virtual
machines or applications.
Key factors in sizing and designing the software-defined storage architecture include the
number of virtual machines to be hosted, storage capacity, IOPS required, resiliency required,
etc. Those requirements then impact the number and types of disk, the ratios of HDD to SSD,
how many SAS and Ethernet/RDMA connections per file server, and so on.

10

CHAPTER 2

Private cloud

The above design approach provides a continuously available infrastructure meaning if
you have two or more file servers, three or more JBODs, and redundant network and storage
connectivity, any component in the architecture can fail with no downtime of the storage or
virtual machines.
While a detailed design is beyond the scope of this book, significant detail is provided
in the “Infrastructure as a Service Product Line Architecture” document referred to at the
beginning of this chapter. In that document we provide a detailed reference architecture for
the software-defined storage approach (as well as designs for non-converged and converged
storage architectures).

Software-defined storage management
With a general understanding of the software-defined storage architecture, it becomes
clear that there is a significant amount of configuration possibilities as each layer of the
­architecture such as hardware, operating system, failover clustering, storage spaces, and
file server role have a multitude of settings and options available. While all of these are
­configurable via Windows PowerShell to enable automation, System Center 2012 R2 V
­ irtual
Machine Manager (VMM) is able to automate the deployment and management of the
software-defined storage architecture.
Using VMM to deploy the software-defined storage architecture begins with ensuring the
VMM fabric (library, host groups, network, and storage discovery) is configured. This ensures
basic prerequisites such as operating system images and other environment configuration
settings are specified. The process for using VMM to deploy Scale-out File Server cluster is
documented in detail on Microsoft TechNet (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/
gg610634.aspx) and the following steps are summarized from that article:
1. Perform initial configuration of the physical computers. This includes configuring the

basic input/output system (BIOS) to support virtualization, setting the BIOS boot o
­ rder
to boot from a Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE)-enabled network ­adapter as
the first device, and configuring the logon credentials and IP address ­settings for the
baseboard management controller on each computer.
2. Create Domain Name System (DNS) entries and Active Directory computer accounts

for the computer names that will be provisioned, and allow time for DNS replication
to occur. This step is not required, but it is strongly recommended in an environment
where you have multiple DNS servers, where DNS replication may take some time.
3. Prepare the PXE server environment, and add the PXE server to VMM management.
4. Add the required resources to the VMM library. These resources include a generalized

virtual hard disk with an appropriate operating system that will be used as the base
­image, and optional driver files to add to the operating system during installation.

Software-defined storage

CHAPTER 2

11

5. In the library, create one or more host profiles, or as of Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2

(VMM), physical computer profile. These profiles include configuration settings, such
as the location of the operating system image, and hardware and operating ­system
configuration settings.
6. To create a Hyper-V host, run the Add Resources Wizard to discover the physical

c­ omputers, to configure settings such as the host group and the host or physical
­computer profile to use, to configure custom deployment settings, and to start the
operating system and Hyper-V deployment.
7. To create a Scale-out File Server cluster (as of System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine

Manager only), run the Create Clustered File Server Wizard to discover the ­physical
computers, to configure settings such as the cluster name, provisioning type, and
­discovery scope, and to start the Scale-out File Server cluster deployment.
8. During deployment, the VMM management server restarts the physical computers

by issuing “Power Off” and “Power On” commands to the BMC through out-of-band
­management. When the physical computers restart, the PXE server responds to the
boot requests from the physical computers.
9. The physical computers boot from a customized Windows Preinstallation Environment

(Windows PE) image on the PXE server. The Windows PE agent prepares the computer,
configures the hardware when it is necessary, downloads the operating system image
(.vhd or .vhdx file) together with any specified driver files from the library, and applies
the drivers to the operating system image.
10. Roles are then enabled as follows:
■■
■■

For Hyper-V hosts, the Hyper-V role is enabled.
For Scale-out File Servers (as of VMM 2012 R2 only) the Failover Cluster feature
and File Server role are enabled. Then, after the cluster is created, the Scale-out File
Server role is enabled in the cluster.

11. The computer is then restarted.

To deploy the basic software-defined storage scale unit (the two-node scale-out file ­cluster
illustrated previously), the above procedure would be utilized to configure two ­bare-metal
servers with Windows Server 2012 R2. Those two servers would then be ­configured by VMM
to form a Scale-out File Server cluster using the following steps:
1. Enable the file server role on the computers.
2. Enable the Scale-out File Server role on the cluster.
3. Add the provisioned computers as a Scale-out File Server cluster under VMM

­management.
The above procedures can also be performed in one process using the Create Clustered
File Server Wizard in VMM.
With the above process completed, a new two-node Scale-out File Server cluster is now
part of the fabric defined and managed by VMM. VMM will discover all of the ­physical

12

CHAPTER 2

Private cloud

s­ torage (SAS JBOD, disks, and so on) attached to the cluster and be able to manage and
configure that as well. The process consists of creating a storage pool using some or all of
the ­physical disks available to the cluster. While simple, this part of the setup is critical as
your choices of which disks (HDD, SSD, or combination of both) determine the capacity and
­performance characteristics of the pool you are about to configure.
After the storage pool(s) have been configured, the next step is to create storage spaces,
cluster shared volumes, and file shares to present the storage. This also is accomplished in
VMM using simple wizards. The Create File Share Wizard will ask you which storage pool
you would like to create the share on then it will ask for a critical piece of information, the
­resilience and redundancy options for the storage space that will be created on the storage
pool. The options are:
■■

Parity Allows you to select Single or Dual.

■■

Mirror Allows you to select Two-way or Three-way.

These settings determine the resiliency to disk failure that the storage space can provide.
Parity provides better capacity utilization but is not as high performance as mirroring. Dual
parity or Three-way mirroring provide higher resiliency as more disks can fail without losing
data than Single parity or Two-way mirroring.
With the deployment of SMB 3.0 file shares on the scale-out file cluster, the architecture
is now able to present high speed and high availability storage. From bare-metal servers and
JBOD in the rack, VMM is able to deploy and configure the complete storage architecture.
Advanced features such as tiering, QoS, RDMA, and many others are available. At a cost
point far lower than most SANs, this architecture provides an excellent starting point for a
­virtualized private cloud architecture.

Additional storage capabilities
While we have discussed in some detail software-defined storage and management,
System Center also provides robust support for managing SAN and converged storage
­infrastructures. Many organizations have significant investments in storage that they want
to continue to leverage and VMM provides the same management capabilities for physical
­storage infrastructures as for virtual or software-defined storage infrastructures.
VMM has been enhanced to support managing disparate storage architectures i­ncluding
Fibre Channel and iSCSI SAN. VMM can add and discover external storage arrays that are
managed by Storage Management Initiative—Specification (SMI-S) or Store ­Management
Provider (SMP) providers. VMM can also manage virtual Fibre Channel so that an ­existing
Fibre Channel SAN can be utilized by guest virtual machines. Similarly to the SMB 3.0
­software-defined storage approach, a significant amount of storage integration and
­management can be performed in software with VMM in concert with physical storage
­infrastructure.

Software-defined storage

CHAPTER 2

13

Cloud-integrated storage
In addition to on-premises, Windows Server 2012 R2 storage solutions, the Microsoft storage
platform also includes cloud-integrated storage using StorSimple.
StorSimple cloud-integrated storage (CiS) provides primary storage, backup, archive,
and disaster recovery. Combined with Windows Azure, this hybrid cloud storage solution
­optimizes total storage costs and data protection for enterprises.
Cloud-integrated storage enables a seamless continuum of storage, comprised of ­multiple
tiers such as local SSD, local HDD, and remote Windows Azure storage with the ability to
place data in the most optimal location based on usage and cost. Figure 2-5 illustrates
­extending the previously described storage architecture comprised of Windows Server 2012 R2
and SAS JBOD storage to include the StorSimple appliance and connectivity to Windows
Azure storage for a complete cloud-integrated storage solution with multiple storage tiers.

FIGURE 2-5 A storage architecture that includes the StorSimple appliance and connectivity to Windows

Azure storage.

14

CHAPTER 2

Private cloud

A full discussion of hybrid storage is beyond the scope of this book but is the focus
of another Microsoft Press e-book titled Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud
Model (ISBN 9780735679603), by Marc Farley http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/­
archive/2013/07/26/free-ebook-rethinking-enterprise-storage-a-hybrid-cloud-model.aspx.

Software-defined networking
The concepts of software-defined networking are similar to those of software-defined
­storage in that the software provides the majority of the intelligence and functionality of
the ­network infrastructure. This can also be described as separating the control plane
(how ­network ­traffic is routed/processed) from the data plane (the packets and data that
flow and traverse the ­network) and implementing the control plane in software as opposed
to ­hardware (for example, virtual routers instead of physical routers). The benefits are the
same as with storage such as increased flexibility and agility in being able to re-configure the
­network architecture as needs change without having to replace hardware.

Software-defined network platform
As with storage, Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 contain large
­investments in software-defined networking capability. Many of the design requirements
were driven by the needs of large enterprises and service providers architecting large scale,
multitenant infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solutions. A number of different platform
and management capabilities are required to truly deliver a software-defined networking
­solution.

Hyper-V NIC teaming
From Windows Server 2012 onward, network interface card (NIC) teaming is a built-in f­ eature
of the operating system with a simple and easy to use interface for rapidly ­configuring
­teaming for highly available network connectivity to hosts and virtual machines. NIC teaming
includes several modes and options which can be configured for different design scenarios.
Windows Server NIC teaming is the foundation of a software-defined network ­infrastructure
as it ensures that all higher-level networking capabilities are built on a highly available
­foundation with hosts using two or more network adapters. NIC teaming enables both
­network high availability as well as bandwidth aggregation.

Hyper-V Virtual Switch
As described on Microsoft TechNet, the Hyper-V Virtual Switch is a software-based layer-2
network switch that is available in Hyper-V Manager when you install the Hyper-V server role.
The Hyper-V Virtual Switch includes programmatically managed and extensible capabilities
to connect virtual machines to both virtual networks and the physical network. In addition,
Hyper-V Virtual Switch provides policy enforcement for security, isolation, and service levels.

Software-defined networking

CHAPTER 2

15

With built-in support for Network Device Interface Specification (NDIS) filter drivers
and Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) callout drivers, the Hyper-V Virtual Switch enables
­independent software vendors (ISVs) to create extensible plug-ins (known as Virtual Switch
Extensions) that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities. Virtual Switch
Extensions that you add to the Hyper-V Virtual Switch are listed in the Virtual Switch Manager
feature of Hyper-V Manager.
Virtual Switch extension types include capturing, filtering, and forwarding extensions
which correspond to the types of actions the extensions can take. For example, a capture
­extension can capture and examine traffic but cannot change it. A filtering extension can
make policy decisions such as evaluating firewall rules and determine whether to allow
the traffic to pass through the switch or not. Finally, forwarding extensions can forward
­traffic flow information to an external system such as a virtual appliance for network policy
­enforcement. An example of a full featured forwarding extension is the Cisco Nexus 1000v
solution for Hyper-V.
A diagram of the Hyper-V Virtual Switch architecture, derived from a diagram on Microsoft
MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh582268(v=vs.85).aspx),
is illustrated in Figure 2-6.
The Hyper-V Virtual Switch is the key enabling feature for software-defined networking
as it exists between the Hyper-V host’s physical network connectivity and all of the host’s
virtual machines. Having a software layer at that point enables the features listed above as
well as many others. The extensible design of the switch allows enhancements by Microsoft or
partners to add new capabilities.
The features of the Hyper-V Virtual Switch include:
■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

16

ARP/ND Poisoning (spoofing) protection Provides protection against a malicious
VM using Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) spoofing to steal IP addresses from other
VMs. Provides protection against attacks that can be launched for IPv6 using Neighbor
Discovery (ND) spoofing.
DHCP Guard protection Protects against a malicious VM representing itself as a
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server for man-in-the-middle attacks.
Port ACLs Provides traffic filtering based on Media Access Control (MAC) or Internet
Protocol (IP) addresses/ranges, which enables you to set up virtual network isolation.
Trunk mode to a VM Enables administrators to set up a specific VM as a virtual
­appliance, and then direct traffic from various VLANs to that VM.
Network traffic monitoring Enables administrators to review traffic that is
­traversing the network switch.
Isolated (private) VLAN Enables administrators to segregate traffic on multiple
VLANs, to more easily establish isolated tenant communities.
Bandwidth limit and burst support Bandwidth minimum guarantees amount of
bandwidth reserved. Bandwidth maximum caps the amount of bandwidth a VM can
consume.

CHAPTER 2

Private cloud

■■

■■

ECN marking support Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) marking—also known
as Data Center TCP (DCTCP)—enables the physical switch and operating system to
regulate traffic flow such that the buffer resources of the switch are not flooded, which
results in increased traffic throughput.
Diagnostics Diagnostics allow easy tracing and monitoring of events and packets
through the virtual switch.

FIGURE 2-6 An example of the Hyper-V Virtual Switch architecture.

The above features can be combined with NIC teaming to enable highly available network
access to virtual machines. The security features can be used to ensure that virtual machines
that may become compromised are not able to impact other virtual machines through ARP
spoofing or DHCP man-in-the-middle attacks. Port ACLs open a wide range of scenarios for
protecting virtual machines through access control lists on the virtual switch.
Several of the Hyper-V Virtual Switch features establish the foundation for secure,
­ ultitenant environments. Network quality of service (QoS) is enabled through bandwidth
m
limiting and burst support to prevent virtual machines from becoming “noisy neighbors” or

Hyper-V Network Virtualization
Hyper-V Network Virtualization provides the concept of a virtual network that is ­independent
of the underlying physical network. With this concept of virtual networks, which are
­composed of one or more virtual subnets, the exact physical location of an IP subnet is
decoupled from the virtual network topology. As a result, customers can easily move their
subnets to the cloud while preserving their existing IP addresses and topology in the cloud,
so that existing services continue to work unaware of the physical location of the subnets. A
high-level diagram of a virtualized network environment is illustrated in Figure 2-7.

FIGURE 2-7 An example of Hyper-V Network Virtualization.

Hyper-V Network Virtualization in Windows Server 2012 R2 provides policy-based,
s­ oftware-controlled network virtualization that reduces the management overhead. In
­addition, it provides cloud hosting providers with better flexibility and scalability for
­managing virtual machines to achieve higher resource utilization.
The details of Hyper-V Network Virtualization are fairly complex and beyond the scope
of this book. Several key points for consideration are the separation and isolation of the
­virtual networks created per tenant, the ability for tenants to “bring their own IP address and
subnets,” and the separation of all of the tenant/customer virtual networks from the provider
or datacenter physical network infrastructure. The primary value is that changes to the virtual
networks, such as creation/modification/deletion, do not require changes to the ­underlying
physical network infrastructure. This capability is in contrast to VLAN-based approaches
which often do require changes to physical network infrastructure configuration of switch
ports.

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Another key consideration with network virtualization is that traffic encapsulation using
Network Virtualization for Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) is the mechanism utilized
for virtualizing IP addresses and subnets. The customer or tenant network traffic (from the
virtual networks) is encapsulated inside the provider address space packets. This ­virtualization
is what enables the separation between the tenants and the provider. All of the network
virtualization functionality works between all Hyper-V hosts in the provider environment,
however a key question is how this network virtualization works between Hyper-V hosts and
non-virtualized servers or networks outside of the provider datacenter. In those scenarios,
the functionality of a network virtualization gateway. The gateway, either a physical or virtual
appliance, sits at the edge of the Hyper-V Network Virtualization infrastructure and outside
networks, to de-capsulate outbound virtual network traffic and encapsulate inbound traffic
to virtual networks.
Hyper-V Network Virtualization builds on and works with the NIC Teaming and Virtual
Switch capabilities described previously to enable the complete software-defined network
infrastructure required for today’s large scale, multitenant datacenters. These ­foundational
technologies exist in Windows Server 2012 R2, but to enable true software-defined
­networking, a centralized management capability spanning all participating Hyper-V servers
is required.

Network architecture
In the design example illustrated in Figure 2-1 and detailed in Table 2-1, several different
physical networks were described. The first is a physical management network for accessing
the baseboard management controllers on all of the physical servers as well as ­management
ports on any of the network and/or storage devices. This connectivity is provided by a
­dedicated physical network switch in the single rack design.
The next two networks are the storage and LAN networks. These can share the same
physical infrastructure but in the sample design we illustrate a dedicated pair of switches for
the storage network which would host all of the SMB storage traffic between the Hyper-V
hosts and the Scale-out File Server clusters.
The second pair of dedicate switches host the LAN traffic between all of the physical
s­ ervers and virtual machines. These switches can be connected to any other datacenter
­networks that will be utilizing Hyper-V Network Virtualization.
For connectivity to datacenter networks or external networks not utilizing network
­virtualization, the Hyper-V Network Virtualization Gateways are utilized. These are illustrated
as physical servers or appliances however they can also be deployed as virtual machines by
System Center VMM so the two single-rack unit appliances could be dedicated Hyper-V hosts
running one or more network virtualization gateways.
You should plan carefully to ensure that there is balance between the storage, LAN, and
external network infrastructures. You want to avoid bottlenecks between the external to LAN
and the hosted virtual machines and between the virtual machines and the file ­server-based
storage infrastructure. An additional consideration arises in large scale scenarios where

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more than one rack scale-unit will be deployed to ensure that there is adequate bandwidth
­between the physical networks spanning racks.

Software-defined network management
All of the technologies discussed so far in Windows Server 2012 R2 are the basis for a
software-defined network and delivered through the Hyper-V hosts in the overall IaaS
­architecture. System Center 2012 R2 VMM provides the centralized management solution for
the IaaS fabric. Similar to software-defined storage where VMM provides deployment and
management of storage infrastructure, VMM also provides the management capability for
software-defined networking. VMM is used to manage and configure the provider network
and establish the tenant virtual networks.
VMM utilizes a relatively complex but very flexible set of abstractions to represent all of
the software-defined network elements and constructs. The primary construct is a “logical
network” which consists of child objects such as “network sites,” “IP subnet/VLANs,” and “IP
Address Pools.” These constructs enable modeling of complex network infrastructures. Logical
networks can be assigned to Hyper-V hosts or host groups by VMM so that those hosts and
virtual machines are configured to utilize those logical networks. These constructs are utilized
to configure the fabric or provider network infrastructure in a VMM fabric.
When utilizing Hyper-V Network Virtualization, VMM is also utilized to configure all of the
available virtual networks for each tenant as well as their component subnets and IP address
pools. Figure 2-8, adapted from Microsoft TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/
library/jj983727.aspx), illustrates the relationships between these objects.

FIGURE 2-8 An example of the VMM networking object model.

The diagram shows the provider address space (the physical infrastructure managed by
VMM) and one VM network, which is a tenant or customer address space defined via Hyper-V
Network Virtualization. For simplicity only one VM network is shown, in reality there may be

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hundreds or more VM networks in scenarios such as a service provider with multiple, isolated
VM networks for each of their customers.
In addition to the capabilities discussed so far, VMM is also able to integrate with and
manage physical network infrastructure components such as Top of Rack (ToR) switches.
VMM can integrate with network equipment that supports Open Management Infrastructure
(OMI). In this case, VMM can configure things such as switch port types, trunking, and so on.
A final software-defined networking capability provided by VMM is the automatic
­ eployment and configuration of Hyper-V Network Virtualization gateways. VMM can
d
deploy both stand-alone and highly available pairs of virtual machines acting as network
­virtualization gateways. This functionality is provided using VMM service templates.
When utilized together, all of the VMM network management capabilities deliver a
complete software-defined networking infrastructure, such as the physical fabric network
(provider), virtual networks (tenant/customer), and network virtualization gateways that can
all be provisioned and managed by VMM.

Cloud-integrated networking
As discussed in Chapter 1, “Hybrid cloud computing and the Microsoft Cloud OS,” the
Cloud OS strategy encompasses more than just the private cloud on-premises ­datacenter
by a
­ ddressing both the public cloud (Windows Azure) and service provider cloud.
­Cloud-integrated networking refers to extending the on-premises datacenter network to
both the public cloud and service providers.
Utilizing a combination of Hyper-V Network Virtualization, network virtualization
­ ateways, and site-to-site VPN between both the private cloud datacenter and the service
g
provider datacenter, an organization can establish a software-defined network that spans
both infrastructures. The service provider must enable such functionality using Hyper-V and
related components, which is one of the reasons for choosing service providers such as those
in the Microsoft Cloud OS Network who utilize the Microsoft platform as the basis of their
hosting infrastructure.
In addition to service providers, the private cloud datacenter network can also be
­ xtended to Windows Azure utilizing Windows Azure Virtual Network. Using VPN t­ echnology,
e
the datacenter network can be extended to Windows Azure using several different methods.
The first uses the public Internet as the underlying transport by using VPN gateway devices
in the private cloud datacenter configured to connect using VPN to Windows Azure virtual
networks. The second method entails working with a Microsoft partner (such as AT&T or
­Equinix) who enable VPN connectivity to Windows Azure over their private networks (that is,
not traversing the public Internet).
Using the above capabilities, a software-defined network spanning private, public, and
service provider cloud can be configured using the combination of Windows Server 2012 R2,
Windows Azure, and System Center 2012 R2. A high-level view of such an architecture is
­illustrated in Figure 2-9.

The software-defined network infrastructure provides flexibility in where virtual machines
and workloads are hosted while enabling connectivity between all workloads regardless of
which cloud they are hosted on.

Software-defined compute
Software-defined compute is simply another name for operating system virtualization. As with
software-defined networking and storage, the virtualization platform defines the features
and capability of the virtualized compute infrastructure in the form of virtual machines. In
­addition to the consolidation benefits of running multiple virtual machines on a physical
server, there are also significant benefits in terms of standardization of host hardware, the
ability to live migrate running virtual machines, add resources to running virtual machines,
and a number of other capabilities that increase the flexibility and agility of the datacenter.

Software-defined compute platform
Windows Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V are the software-defined compute platform from
Microsoft. From the 2012 wave onward, Hyper-V includes hundreds of new features and
­capabilities. Hyper-V is the key foundational element of the Microsoft Cloud OS. The Cloud

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OS is comprised of private cloud, Windows Azure, and service provider clouds, all of which
utilize Hyper-V as the underlying virtualization platform. This enables the concept of
­software-defined compute to span all three clouds and for virtual machines to be moved
from one cloud to another or created on the cloud that is most optimal for the workload.
Several of the largest investments in Hyper-V improvements relate to scalability and
availability. Table 2-2 outlines the host, virtual machine, and cluster scalability improvements
between Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
TABLE 2-2 Hyper-V Scalability

System

Host

Virtual
machine

Cluster

Resource

Maximum Number

Improvement
Factor

Windows
Server 2008 R2

Windows
Server 2012 R2

Logical processors on
­hardware

64

320

5×

Physical memory

1 TB

4 TB

4×

Virtual processors per host

512

2048

4×

Virtual processors per virtual
machine

4

64

16×

Memory per virtual machine

64 GB

1 TB

16×

Virtual disk capacity

2 TB

64 TB

32×

Active virtual machines

384

1024

4×

Nodes

16

64

4×

Virtual machines

1000

8000

8×

NOTE System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager can manage up to 1000 hosts and

25,000 virtual machines.

Those improvement have massive implications for datacenter design and the levels of
consolidation now possible. Most organizations that are virtualized still typically run between
15 and 30 virtual machines per physical server. This table shows that should your hardware
be capable, Hyper-V will support up to 1,024 virtual machines on a physical host. Effectively,
Hyper-V has leapt ahead of the capability of mainstream server hardware. That means that
currently the physical server and its cost are the limiting factor, but these improvement open
up the distinct possibility of running hundreds of virtual machines per host, offering another
round of significant server consolidation potential.
As it relates to the software-defined datacenter, the ability to use larger hosts and larger
clusters enables large deployment scale units and resource pools. This provides efficiency of
management and capacity as fewer spare nodes or space capacity is required as compared to
smaller clusters.

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Recalling the reference design illustrated in Figure 2-10, note the Hyper-V cluster in
­ ddition to the Scale-out File Server cluster detailed in the section titled “Software-defined
a
storage.”

FIGURE 2-10 The software-defined datacenter reference architecture.

In this particular example, a 24-node Hyper-V cluster is illustrated. In reality, the ­sizing
of the Hyper-V cluster depends on a number of different, critical variables such as the
­desired number and type of virtual machines being hosted, the physical attributes of the
host ­servers (two servers per one rack unit in this example), and the ratio of Hyper-V hosts/
virtual ­machines to scale-out file cluster IO capacity. In this example, we use a 24-node
Hyper-V ­cluster paired with a 4-node scale-out file cluster with four SAS JBOD trays. This is a
­t ypical design pattern for a high scale and low cost software-defined datacenter scale unit.

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This design pattern should be able to run well in excess of 1,000 virtual machines in a single
rack footprint with the ability to scale out as many racks as needed. Further, if you price out
such a solution using commodity components as compared to many of the “converged”
­architectures on the market, this approach can yield substantial cost savings.
A more detailed diagram of the integration between the Hyper-V and file server clusters is
illustrated in Figure 2-11.

In this design, the Scale-out File Server cluster and associated SAS JBOD are the
s­ oftware-defined storage infrastructure. The Hyper-V cluster accesses this storage using the
SMB3 protocol and a number of associated hardware (RDMA) and software (SMB3 Direct,
Multichannel, and Transparent Failover) for very high speed and low latency connectivity
to storage. Note on the Hyper-V clusters, the reference architecture utilizes four network
­adapters, two supporting RDMA for accessing the file cluster and two without RDMA which
are teamed for host, cluster, and virtual machine LAN traffic. As mentioned previously, this is
an overview of the detailed architecture provided in the “Infrastructure as a Service Product
Line Architecture” document referred to at the beginning of this chapter.

Software-defined compute management
System Center 2012 R2, in particular VMM, is the software-defined datacenter management
tool from Microsoft. It is complemented by the other components of System Center, all of
which are discussed in subsequent sections. A single VMM server is capable of managing up
to 1,000 Hyper-V hosts and 25,000 virtual machines.
VMM is able to discover, inventory, and deploy the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating
s­ ystem to physical servers and then create Hyper-V clusters out of them. The process is similar
to that outlined previously for the Scale-out File clusters so it will not be repeated here. The
end result is that by using VMM the entire software-defined datacenter from storage, to
network, to compute can be provisioned and configured using WMM which enables rapid
deployment of new physical infrastructure and scale-out capability. The single rack reference
architecture illustrated above can all be deployed using VMM.

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A key improvement with the 2012 wave of Windows and System Center is that both
­ roducts are now developed on the same schedule, eliminating the previous months of lag
p
time between a release of Windows and Hyper-V and the corresponding release of System
Center to can manage it. In addition, a key design goal of VMM was the ability to manage all
of the features delivered in Hyper-V using VMM.

Cloud-integrated compute
Cloud-integrated compute refers to the ability to choose the most appropriate cloud for a unit
of compute such as a virtual machine. Any given virtual machine in the Cloud OS concept can
be hosted in Hyper-V on-premises using a design, such as the one presented in this book, in
your organization’s datacenter or it could be hosted in a Cloud OS network service provider’s
datacenter on Hyper-V or it could be hosted in Windows Azure IaaS, which is also built on
Hyper-V. Using System Center 2012 R2 – App Controller, authorized users can ­provision
­virtual machines to any connected cloud. In later chapters we’ll discuss additional cloud
integration capabilities such as extending the datacenter network to Windows Azure using
VPN and extending the datacenter network to service providers using network ­virtualization.
These capabilities enable the datacenter to span all three clouds and enable compute,
­storage, and networking to be consumed from any cloud.

Software-defined management
To this point we have covered the concept of the Cloud OS and detailed ­software-defined
storage, networking, and compute. We briefly discussed the management of those
­capabilities using System Center, however, in this section we will deal with the topic of
­managing the private cloud infrastructure in more depth. System Center 2012 R2 is comprised
of a suite of components, each focused on part of the infrastructure management lifecycle
such as provisioning, monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery.
The Microsoft Press book Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 provides a deeper
dive on all of the System Center components, so we will primarily cover the software-defined
management and cloud integration features of each component, then present an architecture
for deploying System Center.

SQL Server 2012
When discussing System Center, we begin with the required Microsoft SQL Server
­infrastructure underpinning it. Delivering a highly available and well performing System
Center is heavily dependent on an associated highly available and high performance SQL
infrastructure. Later in this section we’ll detail what a best practices implementation looks like,
for now realize that SQL server is a key component of the management infrastructure.

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System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager
System Center VMM is the solution for software-defined and cloud-integrated datacenter
management from Microsoft. VMM can establish the datacenter foundation from bare-metal
deployment of Scale-out File Server and Hyper-V clusters to applying software updates
to those clusters. VMM can integrate with and manage a variety of storage and network
­infrastructure components. For heterogeneous environments, VMM can manage both
­VMware and Citrix XenServer environments in addition to Hyper-V.
Virtual Machine Manager can be used to deploy and manage the software-defined
­datacenter from the datacenter fabric (physical storage, network, and host resource) to
the virtual machines and clouds, to the deployment and management of applications and
­services running in the virtual machines.

Software-defined storage deployment
VMM can be utilized to deploy bare-metal physical servers including pre-boot
­settings, ­operating system deployment, and post-deployment configuration. This
­includes ­configuration of the File server role which is the pre-cursor to establishing the
­software-defined storage infrastructure. Once the file servers are provisioned, VMM can
­create a Scale-out File Server cluster from them and begin the process of configuring storage
pools from the attached SAS JBOD storage, then storage spaces, cluster shared volumes, and
associated settings to deploy the complete software-defined storage infrastructure.

Software-defined compute deployment
With the storage infrastructure in place, VMM can be utilized to deploy bare-metal servers
and configure them to be Hyper-V hosts, then form Hyper-V host failover clusters from the
deployed servers. During this process, the Hyper-V clusters are configured to utilized the
VMM deployed and managed storage infrastructure as the highly available storage for the
Hyper-V clusters leveraging the full set of SMB3 capabilities discussed in the :
Software-defined storage” section. Using VMM for deploying both the Scale-out File Server
and Hyper-V clusters significantly reduces the time required and increases the consistency of
the deployment when compared to the long list of configuration steps that would have to be
performed identically on all the nodes if done manually. VMM also enables rapid scale-out by
adding additional clusters or nodes using the same automation when needed.

Software-defined network deployment
With the software-defined storage and compute foundation in place, the final part of
fabric deployment can be performed which is establishing the software-defined ­network
­infrastructure. This entails creating the appropriate port profiles, logical switches, and
­virtual networks as described in the “Software-defined networking” section. This step
might also ­include adding third-party extensions to the Hyper-V virtual switches in the host

Software-defined management

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i­nfrastructure or configuring any number of capabilities such as NIC teaming, QoS, port ACLs,
and other settings.
Another critical deployment step for the software-defined network is the deployment of
network virtualization gateways, also fully automated by VMM, to enable connectivity to
and from the isolated virtual networks created in the infrastructure. VMM includes service
templates which assist in automatically deploying virtual machines to perform the network
virtualization gateway functionality.
VMM also can manage IP addressing, both static and dynamic, or it can integrate with the
IP Address Management (IPAM) capability of Windows Server 2012 R2.

Software-defined management
With the storage, network, and compute fabric deployed, VMM provides a number of
­additional capabilities. From a fabric perspective, VMM supports on-demand compliance
scanning and updating of the fabric. VMM can monitor the update status of the fabric
­servers, scan for compliance, and apply updates for selected servers.
VMM supports automated updates of Hyper-V host clusters. When VMM performs update
remediation on a host cluster, VMM places one cluster node at a time in maintenance mode
and then installs updates. If the cluster supports live migration, intelligent placement is used
to migrate virtual machines off of the cluster node.
One of the primary benefits of a software-defined datacenter is the ability to ­optimize the
usage of infrastructure from a capacity and power perspective dynamically. An ­example of
this is the Dynamic Optimization and Power Optimization features in VMM. With ­Dynamic
Optimization, VMM live migrates virtual machines within a host cluster to improve load
balancing among hosts and to correct any placement constraints for virtual machines
to ­optimize the cluster based on policies configured by the administrator. With Power
­Optimization, VMM helps manage energy efficiency by turning off hosts in a cluster that
are not needed to meet resource requirements and turns the hosts back on when they are
needed again.
Beyond managing the fabric, VMM is also the foundation of application and service
deployment, including complex multi-tier services consisting of many virtual machines. VMM
can deploy individual virtual machines, VM roles which as single tier, scale-out constructs of
one or more identical VMs, such as a web farm, and service templates which are n-tier models
of complex applications or services.

System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager
System Center Operations Manager is the monitoring and alerting component of System
­Center covering physical, virtual, and applications/service resources. Operations Manager
is a key component of software-defined datacenter management as it provides a view of
the ­entire physical and virtual infrastructure. In recent versions, Operations Manager has
­expanded to support monitoring Linux systems as well as network and storage ­devices.

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­ perations Manager continues to be extended by a wide range of partners through
O
­management packs. From an IT process automation perspective, Operations Manager is
frequently the source of alerts and events which are the triggers for process automation
or Orchestrator runbooks. Examples include a performance alert triggering a runbook to
scale out a web farm, or a hardware fault triggering a runbook to place a Hyper-V host into
­maintenance mode.
Operations Manager also delivers cloud-integrated management capability as it ­includes
robust support for monitoring resources deployed in the public cloud including both
­Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services. The heterogeneous monitoring ­capability
­spanning both private and public clouds is a key differentiator and pre-requisite for the
software-defined datacenter.

System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager
System Center Service Manager deals with the ITIL-based service management and human
workflow side of process automation. Until Service Manager was released, System Center had
long been missing a centralized configuration management database (CMDB) consolidating
all of the discovered inventory and configuration information from the entire System Center
suite—from devices inventoried by Configuration Manager to users from Active Directory to
virtual resources from VMM. Service Manager implements ITIL-based service management
­processes, such as Incident and Change Management, by enabling a human workflow e
­ ngine
for topics such as help desk ticketing, approvals, and routing. Service Manager includes a
­customizable self-service portal and extensible service catalog.

System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager
System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) provides backup and disaster recovery
functionality for Microsoft applications and services. From backing up data or Microsoft
­applications such as SharePoint or SQL Server to recovery services in an alternate site, DPM
is designed to provide a cost-efficient solution for backup and disaster recovery. DPM is also
evolving to be a cloud-integrated backup solution through the ability to utilize Windows
Azure storage as the target for backups.

System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator
System Center Orchestrator adds a workflow engine, authoring experience, and execution
­infrastructure for runbooks, which are instances of IT process automation. While each System
Center component discussed in this chapter includes automation of certain processes, they
typically deal with only part of the management lifecycle. For processes which need to span
the lifecycle, or which need to integrate with multiple System Center or third-party systems,
Orchestrator is an excellent solution.

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29

System Center 2012 R2 App Controller
App Controller provides a common self-service experience to configure, deploy, and manage
virtual machines and services across private and public clouds. App Controller has the ability
to connect to VMM-based private clouds (consisting of Hyper-V, VMware, or Xen), Windows
Azure, and service provider clouds through Service Provider Foundation (SPF) and VMM
running at the service provider (which will be described in later in this book). App Â­Controller
provides valuable functionality for certain use cases but the clear direction of the System
Center suite from a self-service point of view is the Windows Azure Pack.

System Center 2012 R2 Windows Azure Pack
The Windows Azure Pack integrates with System Center and Windows Server to help provide
a self-service portal for managing services such as websites, virtual machines, and service
bus. Windows Azure Pack also provides a portal for administrators to manage resource
clouds, scalable web hosting, and more. The diagram in Figure 2-12 illustrates the high-level
Â­Windows Azure Pack conceptual architecture.

Windows Azure Pack is a critical piece of the Cloud OS as it provides user interface and
API consistency between Windows Azure (public cloud) and private cloud or service provider
clouds. This provides a common user experience for consumers of the Cloud OS regardless of
where their virtual machines, websites, and services are deployed.
The Windows Azure Pack can be utilized by either enterprises wishing to deploy a robust
self-service capability for their private cloud infrastructure or by service providers looking to
enable self-service for their commercially hosted services.

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In addition to the self-service portal and SPF APIs, Windows Azure Pack also includes
Service Management Automation (SMA). Service Management Automation is a set of tools
that is integrated as the Automation extension in Windows Azure Pack. Administrators and
developers can use SMA to construct, run, and manage runbooks to integrate, orchestrate,
and automate IT business processes. SMA runbooks utilize the Windows PowerShell workflow
engine.
A frequently asked question is the relationship and seeming overlap between ­Orchestrator
and SMA. Both have appropriate uses in the R2 wave (Orchestrator for integration across
disparate management systems and SMA for all other automation using Windows PowerShell)
and is part of the overall evolution of the orchestration capability from Microsoft which will
continue to be expanded in SMA. So for all new automation activities that can be performed
with SMA, that is the recommended path. For those that cannot be achieved with SMA,
­Orchestrator is the recommended solution.

System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager
System Center Configuration Manager provides client device and application ­management.
From deployment of desktops and devices to managing application delivery and
­virtualization, Configuration Manager is a key component of an enterprise management
­infrastructure. Configuration Manager is primarily a device and application ­management
­platform but still provides functionality in terms of software and operating system
­deployment that may be required in some datacenter scenarios.

System Center 2012 R2 fabric management architecture
A software-defined datacenter fabric is comprised of storage, network, and compute as
we have seen in previous sections. Fabric management is provided by System Center and
therefore a robust architecture for both SQL Server and System Center is required for a
highly available fabric management capability. In an IaaS design, either for private cloud or
service provider cloud, high availability of the management infrastructure is required as that
management infrastructure is what the self-service capability utilizes to provide services to
consumers.
The previous section just scratched the surface on the capability of System Center. As
the suite has grown in capability, it has also grown in complexity of deployment. Just as an
­enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite may run an organization’s entire set of ­business
­processes and therefore requires significant design and implementation planning, ­System
Center is capable of running an organization’s entire Cloud OS and software-defined
­datacenter infrastructure, therefore it also warrants significant design and implementation
planning.
Recalling the reference architecture rack diagram illustrated earlier in Figure 2-1, a third
cluster (in addition to the Scale-out File Server and Hyper-V host cluster) is included as part
of the design. This cluster is the fabric management cluster, a set of Hyper-V hosts (typically

Software-defined management

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two to four nodes) dedicate to running the SQL Server and System Center ­infrastructure
required for software-defined datacenter management. A frequent question is why the
­recommendation of having a dedicated fabric management cluster, why not run the SQL
and System Center virtual machines alongside the workload virtual machines on the fabric
­Hyper-V cluster(s)? There are several reasons for the separation, the primary reason being
predictable performance and high availability. Having the separation of fabric management
from fabric ensures that there is dedicated capacity for the management infrastructure so
that it remains available and high performance regardless of the amount of utilization of
the fabric cluster. This ensures that should workloads on the fabric start consuming all of
the available fabric capacity, the fabric management infrastructure, with its own dedicated
capacity, will be able to monitor and react to the surge in usage. If fabric management was
co-located with the fabric, performance degradation or competition might occur. Given these
and other considerations, our strong recommendation and reference architecture specify a
dedicated Hyper-V host cluster for the fabric management deployment.
Using the dedicated fabric management cluster, the reference architecture utilizes a fully
virtualized SQL Server guest cluster as the basis for all of the required System Center database
functionality. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, a high performance and high
availability SQL Server foundation is absolutely critical for a robust deployment of System
Center for fabric management.
A key aspect of the reference architecture detailed below is full virtualization and
­scale-out design. What that means is that fabric management is deployed initially in the
smallest ­footprint possible (though still quite a large set of virtual machines) based on the
expected capacity of the fabric to be managed. Since elasticity is a key cloud ­attribute,
the fully ­virtualized design of the fabric management infrastructure enables each ­major
part (SQL guest cluster, System Center components, and Windows Azure Pack) to be
scale-out i­ndependently by adding additional virtual machines. Similarly, should the fabric
­management cluster require more than two nodes to achieve the appropriate performance,
it also is just matter of adding additional nodes to the fabric management cluster. In all cases,
this scale out can be performed with minimal downtime to any of the fabric management
components.

Fabric management SQL Server design
In this section, we present an overview of the SQL Server 2012 design for fabric management
which is captured in detail in the “IaaS Product Line Architecture (PLA) Fabric Management
Architecture Guide” on Microsoft TechNet at http://aka.ms/iaasfabricmanagement. The SQL
design is the output of all of the recommended and best practices for both SQL cluster design
and each System Center component’s requirements. The design assumes full implementation
of all System Center features except for Configuration Manager and Data Protection Manager
which are optional components.

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The design leverages a SQL Server 2012 guest cluster and multiple SQL Server instances
within the guest cluster to follow either best practices for separation (such as database engine
from analysis service) or constraints (such as scale-out and scale-up) where instances can be
managed individually and be distributed between the guest cluster nodes. The end result
is a very complex design, however, one which has been validated across both the relevant
­product groups and Microsoft Consulting Services, and Premier Support as our standard
reference architecture for deploying SQL and System Center to provide highly available IaaS
capability. The required and optional SQL instances are illustrated in Figure 2-13.

FIGURE 2-13 An example of fabric management SQL design.

As mentioned, the SQL instances are all hosted in a SQL guest cluster running on the
fabric management host cluster. Each database instance minimally requires two LUNs, Shared
VHDX, or SMB3 file shares for database and log storage. More advanced designs for larger
scale may use three or more for each instance. The detailed design of the SQL guest cluster
is included in the “Infrastructure as a Service Product Line Architecture - Fabric ­Management
Guide” mentioned previously. There are several options for the shared storage required
for the SQL guest cluster including iSCSI, virtual fiber channel, Shared VHDX, and SMB3 file
shares. A detailed discussion of these options is beyond the scope of this book but covered in
detail in the PLA.

Fabric Management System Center Design
With the underlying SQL Server architecture defined, the deployment of the System
­Center 2012 R2 suite can be designed. Like the SQL guest cluster, each of the System
Center ­components deployed are deployed using a high availability design using ­either
highly ­available VMs, guest clustering, or redundant/load-balanced virtual machines
­using a
­ pplication level high availability. The diagram in Figure 2-14 illustrates the smallest
­footprint design of the fabric management architecture. A second design pattern supporting
larger scale is detailed in the “Infrastructure as a Service Product Line Architecture - Fabric
­Architecture Guide” found on Microsoft TechNet at http://aka.ms/iaasfabricarchitecture.

The fabric management architecture is complicated, however, when considering the wide
range of management capability provided by System Center, the inclusion of Windows Azure
Pack, and the ability of a two to four physical node fabric management cluster to manage
thousands of virtual machines, the complexity is put in some perspective.

34

CHAPTER 2

Private cloud

CHAPTER 3

Public cloud
P

ublic cloud refers to large scale cloud services delivered by an organization such
as ­Microsoft. Unlike private cloud, where organizations own and operate the
­infrastructure, public cloud enables organizations to consume cloud services and
­capacity on-demand. Microsoft provides a large portfolio of both consumer and
­enterprise cloud services such as Office 365 and Windows Azure. In a hybrid cloud
infrastructure, Windows Azure delivers the public cloud infrastructure and Platform as a
Service (PaaS) capabilities required for a robust hybrid infrastructure.

Windows Azure overview
Windows Azure is the public cloud solution from Microsoft for Infrastructure and
Platform as a Service. Windows Azure is one of the largest investments in the history of
Microsoft considering the massive datacenter, compute, storage, and network capacity in
addition to research and development of the various Windows Azure services.
Windows Azure is a global service hosted in a Microsoft world class datacenter
infrastructure. Many of the Windows Azure services provide a financially backed ­service
level agreement (SLA) and all Windows Azure services use a pay for consumption model
where the user is billed based on how much capacity they utilize. Windows Azure
­enables an organization to host their workloads and applications in the cloud while also
connecting to on-premises resources in a hybrid cloud model.
Windows Azure is built using the same Windows Server and Hyper-V foundation as
the Microsoft private cloud solution described in the previous chapter. This ­foundation
enables virtual machine portability between the private cloud and the public cloud.
­Adding Windows Azure to the hybrid cloud infrastructure provides an effectively
­unlimited amount of capacity distributed across geographically separated datacenters.
For both large and small organizations, this can be a significant benefit.
This section will provide a brief overview of all of the major Windows Azure services
so you have awareness of the large and growing set of capabilities in Windows Azure.
Additional information can be found at http://www.windowsazure.com.

35

Windows Azure compute services
Windows Azure currently includes the following compute services:
■■

Virtual Machines

■■

Web Sites

■■

Mobile Services

■■

Cloud Services

A summary of each of these is derived from Windows Azure documentation
(http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/ ).

Virtual Machines
Windows Azure provides a wide range of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) features such
as virtual machines, storage, and network resources. Creating a new virtual machine
(or many virtual machines) typically takes no longer than five minutes and is performed via
the ­Windows Azure portal or through REST APIs or Windows PowerShell. Windows Azure IaaS
virtual machines are offered with the specifications listed in Table 3-1 with a correspondingly
higher price for virtual machines with more cores or RAM.
TABLE 3-1 Windows Azure virtual machine sizes

Compute Instance Name

Virtual Cores

RAM

Extra Small (A0)

Shared

768 MB

Small (A1)

1

1.75 GB

Medium (A2)

2

3.5 GB

Large (A3)

4

7 GB

Extra Large (A4)

8

14 GB

A5

2

14 GB

A6

4

28 GB

A7

8

56 GB

Windows Azure supports a wide range of virtual machine operating systems including
­ indows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2. Windows
W
Azure also supports Linux virtual machines including Ubuntu, CentOS, Suse, and Oracle Linux.
In addition to virtual machines with just an operating system, Windows Azure also ­provides
virtual machines with applications such as SQL, Microsoft SharePoint, as well as Oracle
­database and other applications. Finally, Windows Azure also allows users to upload their own
custom virtual machine images (such as a reference virtual machine created in Hyper-V and
uploaded to Azure).

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Web Sites
Windows Azure Web Sites allow rapid deployment of web applications and integration with
various Microsoft and third-party or open source development frameworks. Windows Azure
Web Sites are elastic and scalable with the ability to scale out a web application to additional
virtual machines on demand or automatically based on autoscaling policies. Windows Azure
includes a number of different web applications (such as blog/CMS platforms, development
frameworks) which can be deployed into Windows Azure Web Sites from the gallery.

Mobile Services
Mobile Services enables mobile application development by providing features to structure
storage, authenticate users, and send push notifications. Mobile Services provides SDKs for
Windows, Android, iOS, and HTML as well as a flexible REST API. Mobile Services lets you
to build connected applications for any platform and deliver a consistent experience across
devices.

Cloud Services
Windows Azure Cloud Services enables rapid deployment of highly available web
­applications. Rather than creating and uploading virtual machines, with Cloud Services
you upload your application and Windows Azure executes the deployment details such as
­provisioning, load balancing, and health monitoring. Cloud Services are key to the Windows
Azure availability model that underpin several of the Windows Azure SLAs.

Windows Azure storage and data services
Windows Azure currently includes the following storage and data services:
■■

Storage

■■

SQL Database

■■

HDInsight

■■

Cache

■■

Backup

■■

Recovery Manager

A summary of each of these is derived from Windows Azure documentation
(http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/ )

machines, unlike on-premises virtual machines where the virtual machine’s VHD file is stored
on a disk or LUN, a virtual machines VHD file is stored in Windows Azure blob storage which
is an extremely high availability service where each blob is replicated to three locations within
one datacenter and three locations in a geographically separate datacenter by default.

HDInsight
HDInsight is a Hadoop-based service from Microsoft that brings a 100 percent Apache
Hadoop solution to the cloud. This platform manages data of any type, whether structured
or unstructured, and of any size. With HDInsight you can seamlessly process data of all types
through the Microsoft data platform, which provides simplicity and ease of management.
You can analyze Hadoop data with PowerPivot, Power View, and other Microsoft Business
­Intelligence (BI) tools through integration with Microsoft data platform.

Backup
Windows Azure Backup helps you protect important server data off-site with automated
backup to Windows Azure. Backups are encrypted before transmission and stored encrypted
in Windows Azure. These backups are off-site protected by reliable Windows Azure ­storage,
reducing the need to secure and protect on-site backup media. Cloud backups can be
­managed from the backup tools in Windows Server, Windows Server Essentials, or System
Center Data Protection Manager.

Recovery Manager
Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager can help protect important services by
­coordinating the replication and recovery of Hyper-V and System Center 2012 R2 private
clouds at a secondary location.
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) clouds can be protected through
automating the replication of the virtual machines that compose them at a secondary
­location. The ongoing asynchronous replication of each VM is provided by Windows Server
2012 Hyper-V Replica and is monitored and coordinated by Hyper-V Recovery Manager.
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CHAPTER 3

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Windows Azure network services
Windows Azure currently includes the following network services:
■■

Virtual Network

■■

Traffic Manager

A summary of each of these is dereived from Windows Azure documentation
(http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/ ).

Virtual Network
Windows Azure Virtual Network enables you to create a logically isolated section in Windows
Azure and securely connect it to an on-premises datacenter or a single client machine ­using
an IPsec connection. Virtual Network makes it easy for you to take advantage of ­scalable,
­on-demand infrastructure of Windows Azure while providing connectivity to data and
­applications on-premises.
Windows Azure virtual machines can take advantage of a number of advanced networking
capabilities such as isolated virtual networks per subscription, virtual private network (VPN)
connectivity between an on-premises datacenter network and Windows Azure, as well as a
number of other features such as load balancing, DHCP, port ACLs, and many others.
Windows Azure IaaS provides an easy on ramp to public cloud by supporting a wide range
of virtual machines and workloads that can be moved from on-premises hosting to Windows
Azure.

Traffic Manager
Traffic Manager allows you to load balance incoming traffic across multiple hosted Windows
Azure services whether they’re running in the same datacenter or across different datacenters
around the world.

Windows Azure application services
Windows Azure currently includes the following application services:

■■

Active Directory

■■

Media Services

■■

Content Delivery Network

■■

Service Bus

■■

Multi-Factor Authentication

■■

Scheduler

■■

Notification Hubs

■■

Visual Studio Online

■■

BizTalk Services

Windows Azure overview

CHAPTER 3

39

A summary of each of these is derived from Windows Azure documentation
(http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/ ).

Media Services
Media Services offer the flexibility, scalability, and reliability of a cloud platform to handle
high quality media experiences for a global audience. Media Services include cloud-based
versions of many existing technologies from the Microsoft Media Platform and our ­media
partners, including ingest, encoding, format conversion, content protection, and both
­on-demand and live streaming capabilities.

Multi-Factor Authentication
Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication reduces organizational risk and helps enable
regulatory compliance by providing an extra layer of authentication, in addition to a user’s
account credentials, to secure employee, customer, and partner access. Windows Azure
­Multi-Factor Authentication can be used for both on-premises and cloud applications.

Scheduler
Windows Azure Scheduler allows you to invoke actions—such as calling HTTP/S endpoints or
posting a message to a storage queue—on any schedule. With Scheduler, you create jobs in
the cloud that reliably call services both inside and outside of Windows Azure and run those
jobs on demand, on a regularly recurring schedule, or designate them for a future date.

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Notification Hubs
Notification Hubs provide a highly scalable, cross-platform push notification infrastructure
that enables you to either broadcast push notifications to millions of users at once or tailor
notifications to individual users.

BizTalk Services
Windows Azure BizTalk Services is a simple, powerful, and extensible cloud-based integration
service that provides Business-to-Business (B2B) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
capabilities for delivering cloud and hybrid integration solutions. The service runs in a secure,
dedicated, per-tenant environment that you can provision on demand.
The next two sections discuss how to extend the on-premises datacenter fabric to include
Windows Azure infrastructure services as well as extending fabric management to include
managing Windows Azure.

Extending the datacenter network to Windows Azure
The first step in extending the fabric to Windows Azure is establishing secure network
­connectivity between the private cloud datacenter and Windows Azure. Windows Azure
provides several methods for establishing secure VPN connectivity between a private cloud
datacenter and Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Virtual Network
The “Windows Azure overview” section provided a brief overview of Windows Azure ­Virtual
Network. With Virtual Network, you can create private networks in Windows Azure and
­specify your own private IP address ranges to be used in your virtual network. Resources
placed in a virtual network, such as virtual machines, can only be accessed from other

Extending the datacenter fabric to Windows Azure

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41

resources within the virtual network or over administrator specified publically accessible
­endpoints which can be configured with access control lists (ACLs).
A second key feature of Virtual Network is that it can be used to create a secure,
­cross-premises VPN connection between Windows Azure and your datacenter. This is what
we refer to as extending your datacenter fabric to Windows Azure as you can extend your
network to include Virtual Networks you’ve established in Windows Azure, use a common
IP addressing scheme (e.g. 10.x.x.x or 192.x.x.x) across the private and public cloud resources
and even set up your own DNS servers either in your Virtual Network or on-premises.
Within a Windows Azure Virtual Network, you can establish multiple virtual machines and
cloud services which can all communicate using that network. Again, you can determine if
you want to allow any external connectivity from outside the virtual network. The Windows
Azure Network Security (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=389558&clcid=0x409)
whitepaper provides depth on some of the topology options and security considerations.
When establishing VPN connectivity to Windows Azure, there are two primary options.
The first is targeted toward individual users such as developers who may need to connect
to your Windows Azure Virtual Networks from the Internet or arbitrary networks (such as
a developer who moves between locations). In this case, the Windows Azure “point-to-site”
capability can be utilized which consists of downloading a VPN connection profile from your
Windows Azure Virtual Network that the developer installs on their workstation enabling
them to use the VPN client built into Windows to connect to the Windows Azure Virtual
­Network. The point-to-site capability does not require a VPN device or special hardware.
Point-to-site connectivity utilizes Secure Sockets Tunneling Protocol (SSTP).
The second method of establishing connectivity is the site-to-site VPN capability of
­ indows Azure Virtual Network. The site-to-site capability requires the installation and
W
­configuration of a VPN device (or Windows Server 2012 R2 Routing and Remote Access
­Server) in your datacenter to connect to a Windows Azure Virtual Network Gateway you
­configure on your Virtual Network. Microsoft provides a list of VPN devices that have
been tested for compatibility with the site-to-site VPN capability described at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156075.aspx. Figure 3-1 illustrates
the site-to-site VPN connectivity for Windows Azure Virtual Network adapted from this
­diagram on Microsoft TechNet (http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/expressroute/ ).
Currently, Windows Azure Virtual Network only supports connecting your virtual network
to one on-premises site or VPN device. You can have multiple Virtual Networks and connect
them back to one or more sites, but there currently can only be a one-to-one relationship
between a given Virtual Network and on-premises site. Site-to-site connectivity uses IPSec
and IKEv2.

Windows Azure ExpressRoute
Windows Azure ExpressRoute enables you to create private connections between Azure
datacenters and infrastructure that’s on your premises or in a colocation environment.
­ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public Internet, and offer more reliability,
faster speeds, lower latencies, and higher security than typical connections over the Internet.
In some cases, using ExpressRoute connections to transfer data between on-premises and
­Windows Azure can also yield significant cost benefits.
With ExpressRoute, you can establish connections to Windows Azure at an ExpressRoute
location (Exchange Provider facility) or directly connect to Windows Azure from your existing
WAN network (such as a MPLS VPN) provided by a network service provider. The diagram in
Figure 3-2 illustrates the two options adapted from this diagram on Microsoft TechNet
(http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/expressroute/).

Note that in both cases, traffic between the customer site and Windows Azure does not
traverse the public Internet. Unlike Windows Azure Virtual Network, which can be configured
by an on-premises administrator, ExpressRoute requires collaboration with a service provider.
At the time of publication these included AT&T, Equinix, and Level(3). More information on
ExpressRoute can be found here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/expressroute/.
These two options enable the ability to extend your private cloud datacenter network to
Windows Azure. This opens a variety of scenarios such as extending your Active Directory
into Windows Azure or using your on-premises System Center infrastructure to manage and
monitor your resources in Windows Azure.

Extending datacenter storage to Windows Azure
There are several approaches to extending your private cloud storage infrastructure to
­Windows Azure for effectively unlimited storage capacity. As discussed in the ”Windows
Azure overview” section, Windows Azure provides highly available storage through three
foundational storage constructs: blobs, tables, and queues. A wide variety of storage s­ olutions
can be built using these constructs such as applications exposing blob storage as shares,
drives, or other common storage access scenarios. Solutions exist from both an IaaS and a
PaaS perspective.

StorSimple
Cloud-integrated storage from Microsoft StorSimple provides primary storage, backup,
­archive, and disaster recovery, combined with Windows Azure. As discussed briefly in
Chapter 2, StorSimple couples an on-premises storage appliance with Windows Azure blob
storage. The on-premises appliance can provide two tiers of storage: hard disks (HDD) and
solid-state disks (SSD). Windows Azure storage is a logical third tier of storage. P
­ olicies
­configured by the administrator determine when and what type of data is kept on SSD,
which is put on HDD, and which is moved to Windows Azure. This is commonly referred to as
­storage tiering, where the most frequently accessed or important data is kept on the highest
speed (but typically more costly) storage while less frequently accessed or important data is
moved to less expensive storage such as Windows Azure. StorSimple also enables interesting
backup and disaster recovery scenarios because StorSimple devices in different datacenters
can be used to access snapshots and data in Windows Azure for rapid recovery.
Figure 3-3 illustrates a multiple-tier storage infrastructure for extending the ­datacenter
storage fabric to Windows Azure that uses all of the elements described in this book.
The highest performance tier is the Windows Scale-out File Server cluster infrastructure
­on-premises using SAS JBOD with SSD/HDD. While this infrastructure itself can be configured
with multiple tiers, for simplicity it is illustrated as a single tier. This tier is ideal for virtual
­machine storage, high IO databases, etc. The Microsoft StorSimple appliance provides the
point of access for the next three tiers. Tiers two and three represent the HDD and SSD tiers
local to the StorSimple appliance also on-premises. These intermediate tiers are optimal for

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application and file data. The final tier is also accessible through the StorSimple ­appliance,
however, the data is stored in Windows Azure. All of the StorSimple tiers, including the
­Windows Azure tier, are presented on-premises as iSCSI targets meaning nearly any storage
client can access them because iSCSI is widely supported in all operating systems.

PaaS storage
In addition to the IaaS approaches to utilizing Windows Azure storage, there are a variety
of mechanisms from a PaaS perspective to store data in Windows Azure. Windows Azure
storage can be accessed via the Windows Azure APIs from any application with connectivity
to the Internet. A wide range of third-party applications and solutions can also be utilized to
access Windows Azure storage. While the PaaS scenarios are beyond the scope of this book,
it is important to realize the flexibility that the PaaS methods provide to applications and
developers.

Extending datacenter compute to Windows Azure
Extending the datacenter compute fabric to Windows Azure entails using services such as
virtual machines and HDInsight to augment your compute capacity with the effectively
­unlimited capacity of Windows Azure.

Extending the datacenter fabric to Windows Azure

CHAPTER 3

45

Windows Azure Virtual Machines
Windows Azure Virtual Machines, both IaaS and PaaS, enable you to deploy your workloads
in Azure, burst to Windows Azure for extra capacity, or use Windows Azure as a backup
or ­disaster recovery capability. Virtual Machines provide a wide range of scenarios for
­augmenting your on-premises compute capacity and over time Windows Azure will likely
become the primary option for many, if not all, workload deployments.

HDInsight
A second scenario for extending a compute fabric to Windows Azure is in the area of big
data, analysis, and high performance computing. Most organizations can benefit from
the advances in big data, business intelligence, and related capabilities but purchasing,
­implementing, and managing large scale data solutions on-premises is cost prohibitive for
many organizations. Windows Azure enables on-demand solutions for these topics through
HDInsight which provides Apache Hadoop capability. In addition, Windows Azure provides
the capability of Windows Server 2012 R2 High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters to
be built in Windows Azure. The key feature is that very large clusters can be created by any
­organization and they only incur cost during the time they are utilized, then they can be
­easily de-commissioned.
The ability to extend the datacenter network, storage, and compute fabric to Windows
Azure affords any organization access to world class datacenters and associated cloud
­services. Utilization-based pricing provides an easy on-ramp to capabilities that many
­organizations would otherwise be unable to utilize. The next section discusses how to enable
a seamless management capability across the private cloud and Windows Azure.

Extending datacenter fabric management to Windows
Azure
Once the network, storage, and compute fabric has been extended to Windows Azure,
the next step is extending the fabric management capability of Microsoft System Center
to ­encompass all of the resources hosted in Windows Azure. In addition, Microsoft has
­introduced new cloud-based management services that are hosted in Windows Azure
called Windows Intune and System Center Advisor, which are management systems that are
­operated by Microsoft but can manage customer devices and infrastructure.

Self-Service
Microsoft provides two solutions for IaaS Self-Services. The first is System Center 2012 R2 App
Controller. The second is the combination of the Windows Azure management portal and the
Windows Azure Pack.

Windows Azure Pack
The Windows Azure Pack integrates with System Center and Windows Server to help provide
a self-service portal for managing services such as websites, virtual machines, and service
bus. Windows Azure Pack also provides a portal for administrators to manage resource
clouds, scalable web hosting, and more. Windows Azure Pack effectively provides a copy of
the Windows Azure management portal which can be run in a private cloud datacenter or
a service provider datacenter. Unlike App Controller, which is a single portal able to connect
to all three clouds, Windows Azure Pack provides the same user interface as Windows Azure
but is a separate portal. In the Cloud OS, the same user interface is provided across all three
clouds but through three distinct portals. Over time continued convergence and commonality
between Windows Azure, private cloud, and service provider cloud is expected.

Updating and update management
For scenarios in which granular update management is not required (where the update
policy in effect is to utilized the built-in policies, such as download and apply all updates), the
standard Windows or Microsoft Update that is available over the Internet can be utilized by
Windows Azure virtual machines. An example of where this might apply is development or
test in the cloud, or other cases in which granular management via WSUS or Configuration
Manager is not required.

Windows Server Update Services
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) enables IT administrators to deploy the latest
­Microsoft product updates. By using WSUS, administrators can fully manage the ­distribution
of updates that are released through Microsoft Update to computers in their network.
The WSUS server provides the features that administrators need to manage and distribute
­updates through a management console. In addition, a WSUS server can be the update
source for other WSUS servers within the organization. The WSUS server that acts as an
­update source is called an upstream server. In a WSUS implementation, at least one WSUS
server in the network must connect to Microsoft Update to get available update information.
WSUS can be deployed either on-premises or in Windows Azure. Keep in mind that network
traffic egressing Windows Azure incurs cost while traffic into Windows Azure does not.

Extending datacenter fabric management to Windows Azure

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47

System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager
System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager supports two scenarios for managing h
­ ybrid
environments. The two supported scenarios are described in http://support.microsoft.com
/kb/2889321. The first is using an on-premises deployment of Configuration ­Manager
to ­manage virtual machines both locally and in Windows Azure over the s­ ite-to-site
VPN ­capability described in previous sections. The second is a single-server, primary site
­deployment of Configuration Manager in a Windows Azure virtual machine to manage the
other Windows Azure-hosted virtual machines.
Another use case for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager and Windows Azure
is cloud-based distribution points. You can use a cloud service in Windows Azure to host a
distribution point. When you use a cloud-based distribution, you configure client settings
to enable users and devices to access the content, and you specify a primary site to ­manage
the transfer of content to the distribution point. Additionally, you specify thresholds for
the amount of content that you want to store on the distribution point and the amount of
content that you want to allow clients to transfer from the distribution point. Based on these
thresholds, Configuration Manager can raise alerts that warn you when the combined amount
of content that you have stored on the distribution point is near the specified storage
amount or when transfers of data by clients are close to the thresholds that you defined.

Monitoring and alerting
In hybrid cloud architectures, there is a choice in terms of where management servers
and services are hosted (on-premises or in the cloud) and whether the same management
­infrastructure is utilized for both on-premises and cloud-hosted resources.

System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager
As with Configuration Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager can be ­deployed
in several scenarios for monitoring both on-premises and Windows Azure resources. The
Operations Manager infrastructure can be deployed on-premises and is used to monitor
both on-premises servers and virtual machines, as well as the Windows Azure IaaS–hosted
­resources, such as virtual machines and storage, by extending the datacenter network to
Windows Azure using site-to-site VPN. Alternatively, a dedicated deployment of Operations
Manager can be deployed in Windows Azure for managing and monitoring the Windows
Azure-hosted resources.
When utilizing Operations Manager to manage Windows Azure-based resources, there are
two levels of management capability. The first is using the Windows Azure management APIs
in conjunction with the Windows Azure Fabric Management Pack for Operations Manager.

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The Management Pack for Windows Azure Fabric enables you to monitor the availability and
performance of Windows Azure fabric resources that are running on Windows Azure. The
management pack runs on a specified proxy agent and then uses various Windows Azure
APIs to discover and collect instrumentation information remotely about a specified Windows
Azure resource, such as a cloud service, storage, or virtual machine. The Management Pack
for Windows Azure Fabric offers the following functionality:
■■

Discovers Windows Azure Cloud Services.

■■

Provides status of each role instance.

■■

Collects and monitors performance information per role instance.

■■

Collects and monitors Windows events per role instance.

■■

Collects and monitors the .NET Framework trace messages from each role instance.

Discovers relationships between discovered Windows Azure resources, to see which
other resources a particular Windows Azure resource uses. This information is then
displayed in a topology dashboard.
Monitors management and cloud service certificates and alerts if the certificates are
about to expire.
Includes a new Distributed Application template that lets you create distributed
­applications that span Windows Azure as well as on-premises resources, for hybrid
monitoring scenarios.
Includes a set of dashboards for the hybrid monitoring scenarios.

This first level of management capability provided by Operations Manager and the
­ indows Azure Fabric Management Pack does not require the deployment of agents or
W
code into the virtual machines and thus can function against any supported Windows Azure
resources.
The second level of management capability using Operations Manager entails deploying
operations manager agents into the Windows Azure-hosted virtual machines in the same
fashion as on-premises hosted resources. This requires implementation of the site-to-site VPN
capability.

Extending datacenter fabric management to Windows Azure

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49

The combination of the two approaches enables seamless management and monitoring of
both private cloud and Windows Azure resources using Operations Manager.

System Center Global Service Monitor
System Center Global Service Monitor is a cloud service that provides a simplified way
to monitor the availability of external web-based applications from multiple locations
around the world. More importantly, Global Service Monitor monitors applications from
the ­perspective of the customers who use them. Because Global Service Monitor monitors
from locations that are correlated to customer geographies, application owners can gain
insight into customer experiences in addition to the separate problems that relate to external
­factors—such as Internet or network problems—from application or service problems.
Global Service Monitor integrates with the Operations Manager console, so that you can
monitor external and internal-facing web applications in the same place that you monitor
other applications. Using Global Service Monitor, the Operations Manager console integration
lets you monitor web applications from both internal and external locations. In Global Service
Monitor, you can use your management group and obtain access to agents in the cloud that
are provided by Microsoft. This lets you monitor web applications from 15 locations and then
report to your management group. You can also use your own agents as watcher nodes to
monitor internal locations and applications.

Windows Azure Diagnostics
Primarily utilized in PaaS scenarios, Windows Azure Diagnostics (http://msdn.microsoft.com
/en-us/library/gg433048.aspx) enables you to collect diagnostic data from an ­application
that is running in Windows Azure. You can use diagnostic data for debugging and
­troubleshooting, measuring performance, monitoring resource usage, traffic analysis and
capacity planning, and auditing. After the diagnostic data has been collected, it can be
­transferred to a Windows Azure storage account for persistence.

Orchestration and automation
Microsoft provides two solutions for orchestration and automation. The first is Windows
Azure PowerShell and the second System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator.

Windows Azure PowerShell
Windows Azure PowerShell is a powerful automation capability that you can use to ­control
and automate the deployment and management of your workloads in Windows Azure.
­Windows Azure PowerShell can be used for provisioning virtual machines, setting up virtual
networks and cross-premises networks, and managing cloud services in Windows Azure.
­Virtually all Windows Azure services can be managed using Windows Azure PowerShell.

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System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator
Using System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2, you can automate and orchestrate a wide range
of activities. These activities can include direct Windows Azure management tasks, such as
working with storage or virtual machines, but can also include scenarios such as orchestrating
activities within virtual machines and services that are deployed in Windows Azure.
Orchestration in a hybrid cloud environment requires careful planning: there is a wide
range of requirements and options. In hybrid cloud architectures, there is choice in terms
of where Orchestrator management servers and services are hosted (on-premises or in the
cloud) and whether the same management infrastructure is utilized for both on-premises and
cloud-hosted resources.
Microsoft provides integration packs for each of the System Center components. This
­enables Orchestrator runbooks to automate a wide range of management tasks across
­physical, virtual, and application resources. The Integration Pack for Windows Azure is an
add-on for Orchestrator in System Center 2012 R2 that enables you to automate Windows
Azure operations that relate to certificates, deployments, cloud services, storage, and virtual
machines by using the Windows Azure Service Management REST API.

Backup and disaster recovery
Microsoft provides two solutions for backup and disaster recovery. The first is Windows Azure
Backup and the second is Hyper-V Recovery Manager.

Windows Azure Backup
Windows Azure Backup is a new feature in Windows Azure that seamlessly enables off-site
file and folder backups from the on-premises Windows Server, Windows Server Essentials, or
System Center Data Protection Manager to Windows Azure.
Using incremental backups, only changes to files are transferred to the cloud. This helps
ensure efficient use of storage, reduced bandwidth consumption, and point-in-time recovery
of multiple versions of the data. Configurable data-retention policies, data compression, and
data-transfer throttling also offer you added flexibility and help boost efficiency. Backups are
stored in Windows Azure and are “off-site,” reducing the need to secure and protect on-site
backup media.
The backup data is encrypted prior to being stored in Windows Azure. The customer is
responsible for managing encryption keys and backup of those keys. Customer data is never
decrypted in Windows Azure; for restores, the data is decrypted on the on-premises client
side by the customer.

Extending datacenter fabric management to Windows Azure

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51

Hyper-V Recovery Manager
Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager can help you protect important services
by c­ oordinating the replication and recovery of System Center 2012 private clouds at a
­secondary location.
System Center 2012 R2 VMM private clouds can be protected through automation of the
replication of the virtual machines that compose them at a secondary location. The ongoing
asynchronous replication of each virtual machine is provided by Windows Server 2012 R2
Hyper-V Replica and is monitored and coordinated by Hyper-V Recovery Manager.
The service helps automate the orderly recovery in the event of a site outage at the
­ rimary datacenter. Virtual machines can be brought up in an orchestrated fashion to help
p
restore service quickly. This process can also be used for testing recovery or transferring
services temporarily. Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager provides the following
functionality:
■■

Windows Azure–based portal and service that orchestrates DR operations:
■■

Across two Virtual Machine Manager–managed data centers or private clouds

■■

For Hyper-V virtual machines that are running on Windows Server 2012 and above

■■

Leverages Hyper-V Replica technology for replication

■■

Provides single-click at scale configuration of settings across sites

■■

■■

Provides “Recovery Plan” feature to enable grouping, prioritizing, and sequencing of
disaster recovery operations across a large number of virtual machines
Leverages Windows Azure Portal to provide multisite DR operations from anywhere

Using System Center 2012 R2, a single solution for fabric management can be utilized
both for the private cloud and Windows Azure hosted resources. In later chapters, we’ll see
that this also can be extended to service provider clouds for a single management solution
­spanning the three clouds in the Cloud OS.

52

CHAPTER 3

Public cloud

CHAPTER 4

Service provider cloud
T

he third cloud type in the Cloud OS vision is the service provider cloud. These are
clouds hosted by a provider other than Microsoft or the end customer. As discussed
previously, service provider clouds are ideal for use cases that either Windows Azure
can’t support or where Windows Azure isn’t available. Service provider clouds are also
ideal for use cases that are too expensive for hosting on-premises or where on-premises
staff is not trained or capable of managing the particular solution (consider a hosted
enterprise resource planning instance such as SAP).

Cloud OS Network
The Cloud OS vision depends on a robust service provider ecosystem running the
­Microsoft platform to enable the common virtualization, identity, data, management,
and development capabilities as the private cloud and Windows Azure. To achieve this
goal of a robust ecosystem, Microsoft established the Cloud OS Network.
The Cloud OS Network is a worldwide consortium of cloud service providers who
have embraced the Cloud OS vision. These organizations offer solutions based on the
Microsoft Cloud Platform designed to meet customer business needs. Members of this
network combine Microsoft technology with their hosting and geographic expertise
to provide flexibility and choice for hybrid infrastructure solutions. A current list of the
Cloud OS Network partners can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/
server-cloud/cloud-os-network.aspx#fbid=tKWR1hKoghK.
Members of the Cloud OS Network have built hosting solutions using the same
­ roducts and architectures as described in Chapter 2, “Private cloud.” The same
p
­Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Product Line Architecture referenced in those chapters
and used in private cloud deployments is utilized in the service provider deployments
by the Cloud OS Network partners. This provides not just commonality of product
­utilization, but also commonality of architectures and solutions.
Many of the Cloud OS Network partners are utilizing the Microsoft software-defined
storage, network, and compute architectures described in this book because many of
those capabilities were specifically engineered to support service provider needs.

53

By choosing Cloud OS Network partners, you can extend your datacenter fabric and fabric
management to service providers in addition to Windows Azure and achieve the Cloud OS
­vision of a unified virtualization, identity, data, management, and development platform
across the entire hybrid infrastructure.

Extending the datacenter fabric to a service provider
Many of the same concepts from extending the datacenter fabric to Windows Azure also
­apply to extending the fabric to service providers. In some cases, there are different features
or capabilities utilized and those are what we will cover in this chapter.

Extending the datacenter network to service providers
Similar to extending the datacenter network to Windows Azure, extending to service
­providers also entails using VPN capability, however, in this case the combination of VPN
and Hyper-V Network Virtualization can be utilized. Cloud OS Network partners that enable
Hyper-V Network Virtualization capability do so through a combination of Hyper-V, Virtual
Machine Manager (VMM), and Windows Azure Pack capabilities. The end result is that you
can extend your datacenter network and bring your own IP address spaces to the service
­provider datacenter. As described in the section titled “Software-defined networking” in
Chapter 2, Hyper-V Network Virtualization allows the service provider to run multiple isolated
tenant networks side by side allowing each tenant to bring their own IP address ranges.
If the service provider utilizes Service Provider Foundation and Windows Azure Pack
(each described later in this chapter) they can expose a similar network configuration and VPN
connectivity self-service interface as Windows Azure, again providing a common ­experience
across the three cloud types even though the underlying implementation is different.
Establishing network connectivity to the service provider cloud opens a variety of ­application
and management scenarios. Similar to the Windows Azure scenarios, establishing network
connectivity enables you to either deploy Microsoft System Center2012 for fabric management
in the private cloud datacenter and managing both private cloud and service provider hosted
resources or alternatively, placing the System Center implementation at the service provider
and managing on-premises resources from that implementation. When network connectivity
is established between clouds using VPN and network virtualization, nearly all System Center
management scenarios become possible—the most important being the ability to deploy
agents into the running virtual machines for management and ­monitoring.

Extending datacenter storage to service providers
The combination of VPN and network connectivity to service providers enable several storage
scenarios, such as hosting file servers and storage at the provider, replicating storage ­between
the private cloud and the service provider using technologies such as Distributed File System
(DFS) in Windows.

54

CHAPTER 4

Service provider cloud

Similarly to Windows Azure, service providers are also able to leverage economies of scale
and offer raw capacity such as storage at prices that may be less than what enterprises are
able to achieve on-premises. Additionally, since most service providers are not creating global
scale services like Windows Azure where mass standardization is required, they often have the
flexibility to fill niches and needs that may not be able to be profitably delivered by ­Windows
Azure. Examples might be hosting particular types of regulated data, or hosting data in
­specific regions where Windows Azure does not maintain a datacenter. For these and many
other possible reasons, extending storage to the service provider cloud is valuable option.
Many of the Windows features and capabilities, such as DFS, DFS-R, and File Services, are
well known as they have been part of Windows Server for many years and therefore they will
not be covered in detail here. We simply want to emphasize that many of the architectures
you might have used between your on-premises datacenters can also be used when a service
provider running the Cloud OS and allowing network connectivity is selected.

Extending datacenter compute to service providers
Extending the datacenter compute infrastructure to service providers is the same as
­extending to Windows Azure. Cloud OS Network partners enable Hyper-V based hosting of
virtual machines. Cloud OS Network partners also have the option of using Windows Azure
Pack as the self-service user interface to their hosted solutions and providing the same user
interface being utilized by Windows Azure and their customer’s private cloud infrastructures.
An additional capability service providers can provide, which is potentially highly ­valuable
to customers and not currently provided by Windows Azure, is being a replication target
for Hyper-V Replica. Windows Server 2012 R2 enhances Hyper-V Replica to support three
replicas of a virtual machine: the primary or source virtual machine, a secondary replica, and
a tertiary replica. For source virtual machines in a private cloud, the secondary replica could
be hosted either on-premises or at a service provider as can the tertiary replica. This enables
two interesting scenarios. The first is a customer maintaining both the primary replica in the
private cloud and the secondary in a second datacenter in their private cloud with the tertiary
being hosted at a service provider. The second scenario is where the customer maintains
the primary virtual machine with both the secondary and tertiary replicas being hosted by a
service provider. This can relieve an organization from the expense of maintaining a backup
or disaster recovery datacenter while opening up opportunities for service providers to bring
significant value to their customers.
The third cloud type in the Cloud OS, the service provider cloud, enables a number of
scenarios for extending the hybrid cloud fabric to the Microsoft Cloud OS Network partners.
With the fabric extended to service providers, fabric management must also be extended to
encompass the provider hosted resources.

Extending the datacenter fabric to a service provider

CHAPTER 4

55

Extending datacenter fabric management to a service
provider
The final step in building the Cloud OS hybrid infrastructure is extending fabric management
to encompass the resources hosted at Cloud OS Network service providers. This section will
be brief because nearly all of the approaches that were utilized for managing Windows Azure
hosted resources also apply to managing service provider hosted resources. Two enabling
technologies, Service Provider Foundation (SPF) and Windows Azure Pack (WAP) provide
API and UI commonality respectively between private cloud, Windows Azure, and service
provider cloud.

Service Provider Foundation
Service Provider Foundation is provided with System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator. Service
Provider Foundation exposes an extensible OData web service that interacts with System
­Center 2012 R2 VMM. This enables service providers and hosters to design and ­implement
multi-tenant self-service portals that integrate with the IaaS capabilities available in a
­Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 cloud environment.
In many cases, service providers want to enable a robust self-service capability for their
customers, typically in the form of a self-service portal providing secure access for the
customer to provision and manage resources in the service providers shared infrastructure.
Creating such a portal requires a robust set of web services and APIs for the portal to use and
interact with the infrastructure. For the Microsoft platform, this function is provided by SPF.
Figure 4-1, adapted from Microsoft TechNet diagram (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/
library/jj642897.aspx), illustrates the high-level architecture enabled by SPF.
The tenant represents a service provider’s customer, and the tenant has assets on the
service provider’s infrastructure. Each tenant has their own administrators, applications,
scripts, and other tools. The service provider could be an enterprise IT organization providing
services to business units or it could be a commercial service provider or hoster.
The service provider provides tenants an environment, which can include virtual machines
or other resources. The service provider in this case is assumed to have an existing self-service
portal, which all tenants can use (later we’ll discuss the Windows Azure Pack portal p
­ rovided
by Microsoft). On the back end, the service provider has a set of resources (compute, ­storage,
network), which is called the fabric. The service provider allocates those resources into
­discrete groups according to the service provider’s needs in terms of performance, ­isolation,
etc. Each of these groups is known as a stamp. The service provider assigns the tenant’s ­access

56

CHAPTER 4

Service provider cloud

to stamps in whatever manner is appropriate. The tenant’s resources may be p
­ rovisioned
across several stamps, according to the service provider’s policies and business model.
SPFmakes it possible for the service provider to present an aggregated view to the tenant
of all their resources regardless of which stamp they are hosted on. SPF also enables a set of
­application programming interfaces (APIs) tenants can utilize to manage their resources.

FIGURE 4-1 An example of the Service Provider Foundation architecture.

A stamp in Service Provider Foundation is a logical scale unit of compute, storage, and
network designed for scalability that provides pre-determined amount of capacity. An
­example of a stamp is the single rack architecture described in previous chapters where a
balanced mix of compute, storage, and network capacity is designed to support a s­ pecified
number of virtual machines. As tenant demand increases, the service provider deploys
­additional stamps to meet demand. As described previously, these stamps can be deployed
from bare-metal by VMM.
Figure 4-2, also adapted from Microsoft TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/
library/jj642897.aspx) provides a view of how both the service provider’s custom portal and
System Center 2012 R2 App Controller can serve as the front end to the service provider’s
hosted IaaS stamps.

Extending datacenter fabric management to a service provider

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57

FIGURE 4-2 An example of the Service Provider Foundation integration architecture.

Service Provider Foundation uses a SQL Server database to aggregate the tenant
r­ esources, which are managed with Windows PowerShell scripts and Orchestrator runbooks.
The service provider can distribute tenant resources among management stamps depending
on their own policies while to the tenant their resources are aggregated and appear to be
hosted on a single infrastructure.
Another key service provided by SPF is usage metering. SPF provides usage metering that
enables service providers to:
■■

Usage metering is a critical requirement for service providers as it enables them to monitor
and track various metrics that they use to bill their customers for services provided.
The Usage Service captures the tenant-specific resource allocation and consumption
information in a uniform manner across the hosted services (VMs, web sites, etc.). The Usage
Service treats all services uniformly and collects information across these services and stores
them for a limited period of time in a SQL Server database. The information is designed to be

58

CHAPTER 4

Service provider cloud

used by billing or financial systems for chargeback and monetization of the provided services.
The information captured consists of actions performed with billing impact on the self-service
tenant portals or at the Service Management API layer, meaning regardless of whether a
­tenant performs an action through the portal, PowerShell, or API, the Usage Metering service
will capture those actions.
The Usage Metering service does not provide a billing system but is designed to enable
third-party billing systems by capturing the required data and making that data available via
a REST API.

Windows Azure Pack
Windows Azure Pack (WAP) has been described previously as providing an Azure-consistent
self-service user interface for private and service provider clouds. Windows Azure Pack is a
collection of Windows Azure technologies, available to Microsoft customers at no additional
cost, for installation into private cloud or service provider data centers. It runs on top of
­Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.
Windows Azure Pack includes the following capabilities as documented on
Microsoft TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn296435.aspx):
■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

Management portal for tenants A customizable self-service portal for ­provisioning,
monitoring, and managing services such as Web Site Clouds, Virtual Machine Clouds,
and Service Bus Clouds.
Management portal for administrators A portal for administrators to configure
and manage resource clouds, user accounts, and tenant offers, quotas, and pricing.
Service management API A REST API that helps enable a range of integration
­scenarios including custom portal and billing systems.
Web Site Clouds A service that helps provide a high-density, scalable shared web
hosting platform for ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js web applications. The Web Site
Clouds service includes a customizable web application gallery of open source web
­applications and integration with source control systems for custom-developed web
sites and applications.
Virtual Machine Clouds A service that provides IaaS capabilities for Windows and
Linux virtual machines. The Virtual Machine Clouds service includes a VM template
­gallery, scaling options, and virtual networking capabilities.
Service Bus Clouds A service that provides reliable messaging services ­between
­distributed applications. The Service Bus Clouds service includes queued and
­topic-based publish/subscribe capabilities.
SQL and MySQL Services that provide database instances. These databases can be
used in conjunction with the Web Sites service.
Automation The capability to automate and integrate additional custom services
into the services framework, including a runbook editor and execution environment.

Extending datacenter fabric management to a service provider

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59

Windows Azure Pack also provides APIs and builds on the SPF APIs. In addition to virtual
machines, Windows Azure Pack also enables web sites, databases, and service bus services
similar to Windows Azure but hosted in the private cloud or service provider cloud. Figure 4-3
illustrates the architecture that a service provider would deploy.

FIGURE 4-3 An example of the Windows Azure Pack and SPF architecture.

The references to third-party modules indicate the extensibility model enabled by both
SPF and the Windows Azure Pack for the advantage of Microsoft’s large partner ecosystem.
Multiple partners have created extensions for connecting to billing systems, providing hosted
services beyond those provided by WAP natively, and many other scenarios.
Windows Azure Pack enables significant new capabilities to Windows and System Center.
Given its pedigree from Windows Azure and its target use cases with large enterprises and
service providers, Windows Azure Pack is delivered through a highly available set of web
services and capabilities requiring a relatively complex architecture.
Windows Azure Pack is comprised of several required and optional components. Each
component can be deployed in physical or virtual machines and each can be deployed as
scale-out, load-balanced tiers. This section provides the suggested machine topologies for
these components.
There are four defined patterns for Windows Azure Pack deployment:

60

■■

Express Deployment (single server)

■■

Basic Distributed Deployment

■■

Minimal Distributed Deployment

■■

Scaled Distributed Deployment

CHAPTER 4

Service provider cloud

The latter two deployment patterns are recommended for production environments. The
Minimal Distributed Deployment, illustrated in Figure 4-4, is appropriate for enterprise or
small service provider deployments.

For large enterprises or service providers requiring higher scale, the Windows Azure Pack
Scaled Distributed Deployment pattern can be utilized. This pattern further separates the
Â­layers of the Windows Azure Pack architecture into their own sets of load-balanced servers
(or virtual machines). Figure 4-5 illustrates this deployment pattern.

For both enterprises and service providers utilizing Windows Azure Pack, our reference
architecture for IaaS referred to in previous sections considers WAP to be a part of fabric
management, meaning it is deployed (using either of the two patterns illustrated above) on

62

CHAPTER 4

Service provider cloud

the fabric management cluster as virtual machines. In our reference architecture, WAP also
utilizes the fabric management SQL Server guest cluster that the rest of the System Center
components utilize and the WAP database requirements are illustrated alongside those of
System Center.

System Center 2012 R2
As with extending fabric management to Windows Azure, System Center 2012 R2 can also
be utilized to manage resources hosted at service providers. Many of the same deployment
options apply such as using an on-premises deployment of System Center to manage service
provider hosted resources over a VPN connection to the provider or deploying System Center
itself at the service provider to manage all of your resources hosted there. Given the similarity
in approach, those options won’t be repeated here.
Utilizing System Center 2012 R2 – App Controller, and enterprise can connect App Controller
to any service provider cloud that exposes SPF endpoints to them. What this means is that from
within App Controller, it can be configured to provision virtual machines to ­connected service
provider clouds in addition to VMM-based private clouds and Windows Azure.

Hyper-V Replica
As discussed previously, Hyper-V Replica provides asynchronous replication of Hyper-V ­virtual
machines between two (or three) hosting servers. It is simple to configure and does not
require either shared storage or any particular storage hardware. Replication works over any
ordinary IP-based network, and the replicated data can be encrypted during transmission.
Hyper-V Replica works with standalone servers, failover clusters, or a mixture of both. The
servers can be physically colocated or widely separated geographically. The physical servers
do not need to be in the same domain, or even joined to any domain at all.
When replication is enabled, changes in the primary virtual machines are transmitted over
the network periodically to the Hyper-V Replica virtual machines. The exact frequency varies
depending on how long a replication cycle takes to finish (depending in turn on the n
­ etwork
throughput, among other things), but generally, replication data is sent to the Hyper-V
Replica server every 5 minutes in Windows Server 2012. In Windows Server 2012 R2, you can
configure the replication frequency, so that the changes are sent every 30 seconds, every
5 minutes, or every 15 minutes.
A primary scenario that service providers can enable (which is currently not supported
in Windows Azure) is the Hyper-V Replica hosting possibility that was described earlier in
this chapter in the section titled “Extending datacenter compute to service providers.” This
­scenario is where the service provider serves as a replication target for the secondary or
­tertiary replicas of on-premises virtual machines to achieve a disaster recovery capability
without the expense of a second or third datacenter being incurred by the customer.
The typical scenario for Hyper-V Replica is replicating virtual machines from your primary
datacenter to a secondary datacenter. With Windows Server 2012 R2, the ability to replicate

Extending datacenter fabric management to a service provider

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63

to a third or tertiary datacenter was introduced. Figure 4-6 illustrates this capability from a
private cloud perspective.

FIGURE 4-6â&#x20AC;&#x201A; A Hyper-V Replica between three private cloud datacenters.

With the addition of a service provider cloud and assuming the service provider enables
the capability, the service provider could host either the secondary or the secondary and
tertiary replicas. Figure 4-7 illustrates both design options.

FIGURE 4-7â&#x20AC;&#x201A; An example of Hyper-V Replica between three private cloud datacenters.

64

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Service provider cloud

The above scenario can be highly valuable both for enterprises and service providers
­ ecause maintaining secondary or disaster recovery datacenters is a significant cost for
b
­enterprises that can be reduced by leveraging a service provider. For service providers, this is
a net new service they can offer to customers. This is another example of the new approaches
to IT challenges enabled by the Cloud OS.

Conclusion
In this book we’ve described the vision of the Cloud OS and detailed the architectures and
capabilities of the Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 private and service
provider clouds as well as the Windows Azure public cloud. The combination of the three, as
illustrated in Figure 4-8, comprises the Cloud OS hybrid infrastructure. System Center delivers
the integrated cloud platform management suite required to utilize all three cloud types as a
single platform.

FIGURE 4-8 An example of the Cloud OS hybrid infrastructure.

The hybrid infrastructure enables an IT organization to provide a robust cloud service
catalog consisting of infrastructure and platform capabilities such as virtual machines, web
sites, and storage. The cloud service catalog might have multiple items of the same type
(such as virtual machines), each with different cost, performance, SLA, and other
­characteristics ­depending on the cloud type they are hosted in. This enables IT consumers to
choose the cloud service and cloud type or location which is most optimal for their use case.
The ­Microsoft Cloud OS hybrid infrastructure provides a common virtualization, identity,
data, management, and development platform across all three cloud types while delivering a
­common user interface and experience for both administrators and consumers.

Conclusion

CHAPTER 4

65

Additional resources
T

he following resources, which are referenced in this book, can be found on Microsoft
TechNet and in other Microsoft properties. They have been collected here for ease of
reference.
■■

About the author
DAVID ZIEMBICKI is a Senior Architect in Microsoft
Services’ Americas Office of the CTO. David’s areas of
expertise include private and hybrid cloud, virtualization,
and datacenter automation. He has been a leading
infrastructure architect across hundreds of strategic
projects with public sector and Fortune 500 customers in
multiple industries throughout his IT career. David is a
lead architect for Microsoft’s Datacenter Services Portfolio
and the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track program. He is
a course instructor, published author, and regular speaker on Microsoft Cloud,
Datacenter, and Infrastructure solutions.
David’s blog can be found at http://davidzi.com/blog and he is on Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/davidzi.

About the series editor
MITCH TULLOCH is a well-known expert on Windows
Server administration and virtualization. He has published
hundreds of articles on a wide variety of technology sites
and has written or contributed to over two dozen books,
including Windows 7 Resource Kit (Microsoft Press, 2009),
for which he was lead author; Understanding Microsoft
Virtualization Solutions: From the Desktop to the
­Datacenter (Microsoft Press, 2010); and Introducing
Windows Server 2012 (Microsoft Press, 2012), a free
e-book that has been downloaded almost three quarters of a million times.
Mitch has been repeatedly awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) ­status
by Microsoft for his outstanding contributions to supporting the global IT
­community. He is a nine-time MVP in the technology area of Windows Server
Software Packaging, Deployment & Servicing. You can find his MVP Profile page
at http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/mvp/Mitch%20Tulloch-21182.
Mitch is also Senior Editor of WServerNews (http://www.wservernews.com), a
weekly newsletter focused on system administration and security issues for the
Windows Server platform. With more than 100,000 IT pro subscribers worldwide,
WServerNews is the largest Windows Server–focused newsletter in the world.
Mitch runs an IT content development business based in Winnipeg, Canada,
that produces white papers and other collateral for the business decision maker
(BDM) and technical decision maker (TDM) audiences. His published content
ranges from white papers about Microsoft cloud technologies to reviews of
­third-party products designed for the Windows Server platform. Before starting
his own business in 1998, Mitch worked as a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) for
Productivity Point.
For more information about Mitch, visit his website at http://www.mtit.com.
You can also follow Mitch on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mitchtulloch or like
him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/mitchtulloch.

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